Saturday Night Live poked fun at fellow NBC show The Voice this weekend, pointing out the judges perfectly mirror the target demographics for campaign ads. During the “Weekend Update” segment, Colin Jost cited an analysis saying that former Vice President Joe Biden could win over Georgia in the 2020 presidential election “if he can assemble a coalition of Black voters, White women and rural voters.”
“So, basically, The Voice,” Jost said with a deadpan expression. The image beside him then showed three of the judges on this year’s singing competition — John Legend, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton. The three music stars were an uncanny match for Biden’s target demographic, assuming that Shelton’s country music stardom made him a legitimate stand-in for “rural voters.” The audience got a good laugh out of the joke, and as they saw the connection, a few scattered applause broke out as well.
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The Voice has come up a lot in jokes and discussions about the 2020 presidential election since the show relies on the audience’s votes to determine the best singer in each episode. Many political satirists have quipped that, if only selecting elected officials got the same level of engagement as reality shows like this one, the elections could run much more smoothly.
Jokes aside, Jost was citing real political analysis of the election in Georgia, and the latest report indicates that it is going well for Biden. According to NBC News, the state is seeing a record turnout of voters in general, with an influx of new or lapsed voters casting a ballot for the first time in years. In particular, the participation of more Black Americans than usual seems to be working in Biden’s favor.
A Democratic presidential candidate has not won the state of Georgia since 1992, but there is a very real chance that Biden will break that streak. Georgia Democratic Party official Adrienne White explained how advocates have reached out to new voters with the hope of “inviting” them “into that process.”
“There has been a culture shift here focused entirely on getting people involved, with Democratic Party values, who had not been invited into the process of voting. And now, we have invited so many new people into that process,” White said. “Some of these people are here because we got them here. Others have arrived organically, by virtue of having seen what chaos in the presidency really looks and feels like, especially during the pandemic.”
While millions of votes have already been cast early or by mail, Election Day 2020 is on Tuesday, Nov. 3. However, given the volume of absentee ballots that need to be counted, the results may not be clear until days or even weeks after that.
