It’s not obvious whether or not we would expect audiences to have higher demand for scripted political content around elections. On the one hand, a majority of people aren’t political junkies and only seriously tune in to national political news around election season.
It is not hard to imagine people seeking out fictionalized content as a way of processing real-world events. On the flip side, it is equally plausible, given the non-stop coverage and political ads during election season, that people might already have had their fill of political content and could avoid fictionalized political stories.
During the last presidential election year in 2020, the share of audience demand for scripted political shows (i.e.