Season 51 of NBC’s Saturday Night Live recently came to an end, and it was considerably more liberal than Season 50. A new NewsBusters study has found that 91 percent of the season’s Weekend Update jokes were directed at conservatives, while 83 percent of its cold open political characters were conservatives or Republicans.
For this study, NewsBusters analysts examined all 20 shows of the season from October 4, 2025, through May 16, 2026.
RC analysts found that Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che combined to tell 217 out of 238 jokes (91 percent) about conservatives during Season 51. They also told 18 about liberals and three non-partisan jokes. This included 32 separate conservative, 13 liberal, and three non-partisan targets.
Jost and Che’s top ten targets included only one liberal. The list featured Donald Trump (108), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (15), Kristi Noem (12), Tucker Carlson (11), George Santos (10), Melania Trump (7), JD Vance (7), Andrew Cuomo (5), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (5), and Kash Patel (5).
By joking about Cuomo, SNL helped boost the even further-left Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election. Additionally, in the middle of every Weekend Update, another cast member joins Jost and Che to play an absurd character, with Jost or Che acting as the straight man in the scenario. Occasionally, these are political, such as Jeremy Culhane appearing as Tucker Carlson on two occasions that made it seem as if Carlson is still best known for being a conservative culture warrior, and not someone who is constantly smearing Israel, bashing Trump, and making excuses for America’s enemies.
Which makes 91% of the jokes insults to over 50% of adults in the U.S.
A reckoning is coming.