Ahead of the airing of this year’s Academy Awards show, the entertainment industry was rocked by a poll showing that only 29 percent of Californians view Hollywood favorably.
As the year’s top films, such as One Battle After Another and Sinners, took aim at attacking America, and as a long list of activist actors continue to use their platforms to deride President Donald Trump and call for the support of Islamist terrorists in Palestine, Americans are increasingly tiring of Hollywood’s self-absorption and arrogance.
After decades of loud activism in Hollywood, audiences at home have clearly become less interested in the Oscars. As Politico noted just before the show aired on Sunday, the Oscars earned a total TV audience of 46 million in the year 2000. But last year, that number had cratered to only 20 million. And while that 20 million was up slightly from the 2024 broadcast, the number of viewers for the Oscars has been in steady declined for nearly a decade.
Even Californians are increasingly wary — if not weary — of Hollywood.
A recent UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll found that 48 percent of Californians feel that Hollywood has too much influence on politics in the Golden State. Worse, only 29 percent view the entertainment industry in a favorable light.
The split was even worse when drilled down to party affiliation. The poll found that 81 percent of respondents who lean Republican said that Hollywood is too liberal, while only 23 percent of Democrat participants agreed that Hollywood was too far left.
“Hollywood is perceived as liberal, and so the liberals and the Democrats are OK with that, and the Republicans are not,” said University of California Berkeley political science professor Jack Citrin. “If I owned a studio, I would want to know if the … vocal liberalism of people who are in my films — does that alienate people?”
The poll of 1,220 registered voters was taken between February 23 and March 3 with a margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percent.
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