6 Political Comedies for Election Night, From Veep to Tracy Flick's Election
The polls close tonight and the results won't be in for hours. Here are six comedies that already know how it ends.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
It is Election Day, Nov. 3, and somewhere a cable anchor is standing in front of a touchscreen map like a man trying to return a sweater without a receipt. The counting will take all night, possibly all week, and the experts have warned everyone not to draw conclusions early, which has never once stopped anybody. You need something to watch between the county results, and it shouldn't be the county results.
So here are six comedies about politics, picked because they were right about it before the rest of us were. Most are older than your phone, and a few you'll have to rent, which in 2026 is the closest thing left to civic duty. The lesson of all six is the same, and it's a comfort: the people in charge have always been this bad, and the country has always survived them, mostly by not paying attention.
- 01
Veep (HBO Max, 2012–2019)
Armando Iannucci's series follows Selina Meyer from vice president to president and back down again over seven seasons of insults so precise they ought to be taught at Quantico. Julia Louis-Dreyfus won six straight Emmys for the role, and the show won best comedy series three times. Watch it tonight and every concession speech will sound like a first draft.
- 02
Election (Alexander Payne, 1999)
Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, a student council candidate with the ambition of a small senator, and Matthew Broderick is the teacher who decides to stop her. It's adapted from Tom Perrotta's novel and got an Oscar nomination for its screenplay. It's the only movie about a high school election that's also an accurate movie about a national one.
- 03
In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009)
The big-screen spin-off of The Thick of It, with Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker swearing his way through the run-up to a war nobody can quite justify. It was nominated for the Oscar for adapted screenplay. Capaldi went on to play Doctor Who, a man who escapes through time, which is the only way anybody ever got away from Malcolm Tucker.
- 04
The Campaign (Jay Roach, 2012)
Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis fight over a North Carolina congressional seat while a pair of billionaire brothers bankroll the dimmer one. Roach also directed HBO's Recount, so he knows how this business looks from both the inside and the clown car. The jokes are broad and the plot is thin, and every year it looks a little more like C-SPAN.
- 05
Parks and Recreation, Season 4 (Peacock)
Leslie Knope runs for Pawnee City Council against Bobby Newport, a candy-company heir played by Paul Rudd with the serene confidence of a man who has never once heard the word no. It's the sweetest campaign ever put on television, and the only one where the staff actually likes the candidate. Local government is where democracy happens, and also where it goes to take a nap.
- 06
Dave (Ivan Reitman, 1993)
Kevin Kline plays the owner of a temp agency who happens to look like the president and gets drafted to stand in for him, and Sigourney Weaver is the first lady who notices before anyone else does. It's a fantasy, of course: a Washington where the fake man is the honest one. Nobody would buy the premise today, mostly because the fake man would already have a podcast.