David Sirota, a Sanders campaign speechwriter who liberally peppers his writings with “Star Wars” references, texted in response to an inquiry about the debate and movie schedule overlap that “Bernie’s campaign is a Star Wars story.” He added that as vested interests, including a super PAC that supports former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., “have tried to strike him down, polls have shown Bernie and his working-class movement have become more powerful than they can possibly imagine.”

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He also tweeted what he said was a response to those who do not believe Mr. Sanders’s high poll numbers: a clip from “The Empire Strikes Back” of Yoda telling a disbelieving Luke, “That is why you fail.”

Some candidates’ “Star Wars” references are a bit more subtle: The 404 error page for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign website includes an iconic paraphrase from Obi-Wan Kenobi. On Thursday afternoon, Kevin Liao, the Iowa press secretary for the Warren campaign, tweeted a photo of Ms. Warren with a lightsaber in hand, captioned “When it’s #demdebate day and #starwars opening night.” The campaign did not, however, say whether the senator had plans to see the movie.

Stephen Benedict Dyson, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and the author of “Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Thrones and Battlestar Galactica,” said that he saw parallels between certain candidates’ styles and the directorial decisions made in this most recent cycle of films.

“He almost entirely appealed to nostalgia,” he said of director J.J. Abrams’s choices in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” “That’s Joe Biden’s pitch. The danger with that approach is if you go to the well too many times. Sometimes people want something new and something different.”

On the other hand, he said 2017’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” was a “very iconoclastic movie” where director Rian Johnson sought to smash established conventions. “It’s not a battle between the aristocracy,” he said, “but between ordinary people. That seems like Bernie.”