The Importance Of Presidential Debates

There’s a question that seems to make its way around every four years. Do presidential debates matter? There isn’t really a straightforward answer to that question, but studies lean towards no. There are many possible reasons to back up why presidential debates don’t impact the way Americans think about candidates; this essay will be covering three. The lack of poll shifts after a debate, media bias, and voters opinion on appearance.

The first reason supporting the topic is scientific. John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, summarizes the idea that there is very little change in the polls after a presidential debate is held in the Washington Monthly. He later cites the work of Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien, election forecasters, who found that there was "a fairly strong degree of continuity from before to after the debates." There seems to be only one election that combatted the results of the research. In the 1976 presidential election, candidate Gerald Ford 's polls went up by 3.4 percent. Erikson and Wlezien further

Evidence of this can be found in an experiment done by Kim Fridkin and her colleagues. They asked 74 voters to watch the debate and say who they thought won. 25 watched the debate without seeing commentary afterwards, 25 watched and saw commentary from NBC News which suggested that George W. Bush won, and 24 watched and saw commentary from CNN which suggested that John Kerry won. The voters who didn 't watch the commentary came to the conclusion that Kerry had won the election, while those who had watched the commentary done by NBC News thought that Bush had one. There wasn 't much of an effect done by the CNN commentary, who declared John Kerry the winner, considering those who had watched the debate only already considered Kerry the