STUDY: Late Night Shows Target Republican Senate Candidates, Let Dems Go Unscathed

The 2026 field of Democratic Senate candidates offered up plenty of material for the late night comedy shows to work with, but, according to a new NewsBusters study, the four regular late night shows told only seven jokes about them during the fall campaign. In all, 87 percent of jokes about Senate candidates were directed at Republicans.

From September 8 through October 29, MRC analysts analyzed the four daily late night talk shows: Comedy Central's The Daily Show, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers. 

MRC President David Bozell said in a statement: 

"Late-night comedy has become remarkably predictable. When the same people are always the punchline, and the same people are almost never the punchline, eventually the pattern becomes funnier than the jokes. Comedy is sharpest when nobody is off limits. Late night should try it."

What They Joked About: Republican Edition

The comedy shows told 45 jokes about Republican Senate candidates during the study's runtime. This included 19 from The Daily Show, 13 from Meyers, 10 from Fallon, and three from Kimmel.

The jokes featured 14 aimed Texas's Ken Paxton, nine at Maine's Susan Collins, six at Michigan's Mike Rogers, three at Ohio's John Husted and South Carolina's Darline Graham, two at Iowa's Ashley Hinson, New Hampshire's John Sununu, and Alaska's Dan Sullivan, and one at Arkansas's Tom Cotton, Kansas's Roger Marshall, Massachusetts's John Deaton, and Nebraska's Pete Ricketts.

  MRCVideo player

Source site blocks iframe embedding in preview. Imported article will use extracted HTML instead of this embed frame.

Open on source site  

Collins was The Daily Show's favorite target with eight jokes. Rogers and Paxton were Meyers's most ridiculed Republicans at five. All three of Kimmel's Republican candidate jokes were directed at Paxton, while two satirical pun-filled ads made Sununu Fallon's most joked-about GOP candidate.

Jokes aimed at Paxton usually referenced his legal and marital scandals or his persona:

• "Ken Paxton is an absolute vomit of a candidate who was hand-picked by Trump. So Trump desperately wants him to win, which means he's back to calling his opponent Tala-freak-o." – Jimmy Kimmel
• "Oh! Oh, no, he didn't... Make anyone laugh. That guy is awful! Are they really running this charisma black-hole in one of the most important Senate races in the country?"– The Daily Show's Michael Kosta

Jokes directed towards Collins usually tried to attack her as corrupt or a fake moderate:

• CATHERINE JARRETT [Actor portraying Susan Collins]: But after a lot of thought, here's what I'll say. For $150,000, I'll answer any question you want.

  JIMMY FALLON: All right. Thank you. Senator Susan Collins, everyone

• "You know that Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown metaphor? I can't figure out if Susan Collins is Lucy or Charlie Brown. She is either Lucy — cynically pretending to be concerned about the obvious downstream effects of her votes, despite repeatedly voting that way—or she is almost criminally naive about the inevitable betrayal." – Jon Stewart

Other jokes included:

• "You know, courage can take many forms. Although that does not appear to be one of the forms it takes." – Jon Stewart on John Husted voting no on a War Powers resolution about Iran.
• "And you can believe him because he's in a grocery store. Just like us. Everyone knows you can't lie when you're standing next to tomatoes. I love these inauthentic campaign ads inside grocery stores where no one is shopping" – Seth Meyers on Mike Rogers.

• JIMMY FALLON: Darline, I've got to be honest with you, I don't seem — you don't seem very prepared for this election.

  CATHERINE JARRETT [Portraying Darline Graham]: Not at all, no. Luckily, it's not for another few years.

  FALLON: It's in 36 days.

  JARRETT: Well, that's going to be a really big problem.

If telling 45 jokes over the course of 101 episodes does not seem like a lot, it must be noted that the comedy shows spend most of their monologues going after Trump. This includes Trump discussing Paxton's looks or Husted's backside, but those jokes were not included in this study because they were more about Trump than the Senate candidate.

What They Joked About: Democrat Edition

Kimmel and Meyers each failed to tell a single joke about a Democratic Senate candidate during the study's runtime. The Daily Show told four and Fallon told three. Two dealt with New Hampshire's Chris Pappas and Maine's Troy Jackson, while Wyoming's James Byrd, Massachusetts's Ed Markey, and Alaska's Mary Peltola were each subject to one. Most of these jokes were on the tame or light-hearted side.

Like Sununu, Fallon's jokes about Pappas were simply puns from satirical campaign ads:

• "Hi. I'm Chris Pappas, and I'm ready to put my name on the map-pas. I'll give it to you straight, no cap-as. So, vote for me, Chris Pappas"
• "I'm Chris Pappas. Don't listen to his crap-as. He's got a bad rap-as and deserves a slap-as on the ass-as. Stick with me, Chris Pappas."

Similarly, Fallon's joke making fun of Byrd was about his mustache and cowboy hat:

• "Then James Byrd from Wyoming said, 'Did someone say, 'Yellowstone costume from Spirit Halloween'?"

The Daily Show's Desi Lydic mocked Markey for being an old man trying too hard to connect with young voters during a video with Instagram influencer Maria Comstock:

• ED MARKEY: Yup, that's an ick

  DESI LYDIC: I found my ick! It's elder abuse.

The only jokes that had some semblance of bite to them came from The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng and Jordan Klepper:

• "Troy Jackson did have two kids with his second cousin. What makes it worse is, they aren't even married! I mean, come on, Troy, at least make an honest cousin of her!" – Ronny Chieng
• "Shocking news out of Maine: Troy Jackson has been elected senator in Mississippi." – Ronny Chieng
• "I will say, if you ask me, this is bad news and not how our election should work. Democracy should be won on a battle of ideas, not on trying to trick voters. But you know what? Maybe we do have to cut Mary Peltola some slack. She is only 53 years old. Let's chalk this up to a youthful indiscretion." – Jordan Klepper comparing the Fake Dan Sullivan trick to Tennessee Republican congressional candidate Brent Taylor's excuse for his unsolicited nude photo scandal.

What They Didn't Joke About

It is not as if there weren't opportunities to joke about Democrats, but the comedy shows would rather not look for them. As Jimmy Kimmel explained when talking about Texas's James Talarico, "They have nothing to hit the guy with." Rather, Kimmel and the others were more interested in trying to remind their audience to go out and vote in order to get Democrats across the finish line. In doing so, they missed several opportunities:

• Alaska: The New York Times reported on Mary Peltola's "Angry Outbursts, Slurs, and Firings" as well as some "unusual" demands "such as requiring aides to feed live crickets to her family's pet chameleon, Meatball. 
• Florida: In a state known for its hatred of communism and socialism, Democrats nominated DSA supporter Angie Nixon. During the campaign, Nixon said she couldn't possibly support abolishing prisons because she wants her GOP opponent, Sen. Ashley Moody, "locked up."
• Maine: In addition to having children with his second cousin, Troy Jackson also has a reported history of having anger management issues towards colleagues.
• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed campaigned with Mao fan and 9/11 apologist Hasan Piker and previously said that the American response to 9/11 was worse than 9/11 itself. He cheered for the Muslim Brotherhood after their short-lived takeover of Egypt from 2012-2013. After the Temple Israel Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack, El-Sayed claimed "hurt people, hurt people." He has claimed people in Dearborn were sad after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in an airstrike and said that Israel and Iran pose equal threats to the U.S.
• Minnesota: Peggy Flanagan has compared Beyoncé to the Virgin Mary and got caught by the Wall Street Journal of inflating her academic resume.
• Texas: James Talarico once said that there are six sexes, that God is non-binary, and claimed that we need to stop eating meat to fight climate change. There is compelling evidence that his efforts to distance himself from his past remarks are not genuine.

If the comedians did mention any of the above, it was either to defend it or suggest there was something wrong with conservatives for noticing.

Note: This study does not include jokes about third party or independent candidates unless the state's Democratic nominee withdrew in order to make sure that the Republican's main opponent was someone who called themselves an independent.