Halloween’s over, which means it’s time to set your clocks back and fill out your ballots: The 2024 US presidential election is this week.

Whether you voted early or are hitting the polls on Election Day, a great way to gather your strength for Tuesday is with an election-themed stream. Distract yourself from the stress with a vintage White House–adjacent rom-com, educate yourself further about how American elections work, or lean into the intrigue with a twisty political thriller. Happy streaming, and happy voting, America! 

But first, what’s new on Netflix?

A killer throwback. In Hannah Macpherson’s new slasher Time Cut, a teenage girl (Madison Bailey) travels back in time to the early aughts to try to rescue her sister from being murdered. Not your taste? Keep things impeccable with Martha, R.J. Cutler’s new documentary about the extraordinary life of Martha Stewart. Not intense enough for you? Darren Aronofsky’s psychological drama The Whale, for which Brendan Fraser won the 2022 Oscar for Best Actor, is now streaming.

If you have just a night … 

Break the rules. You may think election weekend is a good time to go highbrow political, but a breezy early-aughts rom-com may be just the escape you need when tensions are running high. Look to 2004’s First Daughter, directed by Forest Whitaker (yes, that Forest Whitaker!) and starring Katie Holmes in the title role, as the daughter of the POTUS (Michael Keaton) who heads off to college and strikes up a little romance with her handsome RA (Marc Blucas). 

If you have a whole day … 

Do your research. There are two limited docuseries that can demystify the voting process as well as what it is we’re voting for. First, 2022’s The G Word with Adam Conover examines all the ways that the government directly touches our lives, far from just existing on its own plane inside the Beltway. Then, 2020’s Whose Vote Counts, Explained gets into the details of American elections (with help from narrators John Legend, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Selena Gomez). Released four years ago, in anticipation of that presidential race, it covers the issues and peculiarities that are still relevant this year.  While you’re at it, you can pick a few more Explained episodes to keep your weekend informed: There’s Season’s 1’s “The Stock Market,” Season 2’s “Billionaires,” and Season 3’s “Flags,” among other enlightening half-hours that will speak to the spirit of election season. 

If you have the entire weekend … 

Go international. In a case of perfect timing, Season 2 of Debora Cahn’s The Diplomat just landed this week, so you can take in the whole series (thus far!) this weekend. Keri Russell stars as the American ambassador to the UK who finds herself navigating a thorny political crisis — as well as a marital one, as tensions with her husband, a fellow diplomat (Rufus Sewell), rise. 

Don’t forget, you have one last chance … 

To live, die, repeat. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in Doug Liman’s acclaimed 2014 sci-fi action film Edge of Tomorrow, in which Cruise plays a man stuck in a time loop amid an alien invasion. Next week, it will fall off the edge.

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