20th Century Fox is cleaning up with Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen’s mash-up of and improvisational heckling, social satire, Peter Sellars-style physical comedy and uncomfortable situational laughs born of the collision of various cultural tropes. The film opened on less than 1,100 screens, but stands poised atop the weekend box office with a debut haul of just under $26.5 million, the highest ever per-screen average for a movie bow of its scale. This really can’t be good news for the Republicans in Tuesday’s forthcoming midterm elections.

For all the chatter about why the Weinstein Company didn’t release Bobby a bit closer to the election, the fact is that a nation’s collective psyche leaks out more easily through nervous laughter, and the film’s trailer and television advertising — in which Borat loudly proclaims to a rodeo crowd, “We support your war of terror!” — appears to have struck a chord with anxious audiences, 47 percent of which were over 25.