Are Republican presidents bad for the movie business?

By Steven Zeitchik

Since people love to find correlations between presidential administrations and everything else (the stock market, the Super Bowl, the temperature in Duluth), we thought we'd try it with box office.

What we found  was surprising -- or, more specifically, surprisingly meaningful. Judging by the data, there is a relationship between the party that's elected to the White House and how the film business fares after that election.

It's a relationship that should bring to a studio exec a wider smile than that of Oprah Winfrey in Grant Park.

The average change in box office the year after a Democrat is elected swings higher than if it's a Republican. Going back to 1980 -- seven elections -- the two occasions on which a Democrat was inaugurated each brought a box-office uptick that year.

Republicans? Box-office rose three times and fell twice.

As an average, box-office spiked 6.8% after a Dem was elected but crept up only 3.2% after a Republican took office.

Most striking, the two worst years for box-office in past thirty years came the year after a Republican candidate was re-elected (after Reagan and Bush were given second terms).

Of course causation is always hard to prove on these slippery matters. But here's one freakonomic theory: when a Republican administration comes to power, middle-class consumers are more concerned about their pocketbooks and tighten their spending on things like moviegoing.

More subtly -- but maybe no less influentially -- Dem administrations historically tend to be more favorable to creative expression, which creates a more robust filmmaking and moviegoing climate (and yes, we do need to take into account that it takes most films more than a year to actually get made).

Still, if forms holds, that means we're looking at an increase in '09 to rival the box-office glory days of the Clinton era -- three straight years ('97-'99) when box-office rose at least 7%. That may rep the power of Obama or just the power of odd statistics -- but either way, it'll make many studio execs become overnight fans of former Illinois junior Senators.

Comments

[UGLY PUNK GURL!]

I wonder how movies will change over the course of the Obama presidency. Will Hollywood films now be more upbeat and positive? Or will it take the artsy, serious route?

I know this sounds weird, but under the Bush regime, Hollywood have churned out a LOT of fantasy, sci-fi, big B.O movies, that people escaped to and watched, so they could get away from the depressing state of affairs that we (were) in and feel a whole lot better.

case in point: High School Musical 3 (barf)

now that we have elected Obama, we have something to hope for. So that means we won't be as depressed (hopefully)... will that bring a DECLINE of "feel better" Hollywood films? Or will that continue to bring in sappy feel-good movies?

[Hellstorm]

That's funny, two years ago Esplatter.com asked, "Will a Democratic Victory Be a Disaster for Horror Movies?" - http://www.esplatter.com/2006news/democrats.htm