They say debates don’t win elections. They say that a strong performance or a weak showing can’t override all the many other factors that go into a months-long campaign full of millions of dollars of donations, key endorsements, rallies in battleground states, TV ad campaign blitzes, unpredictable news events and possibly a coveted sit-down interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
But, we say, if debates don’t matter so much, why didn’t they quit having them years ago. Am I right? And, even if debates don’t win elections, doesn’t it seem like there’s a lot of big exceptions throughout history?
Of course debates between political candidates matter. The better questions are what makes some matter more than others and how can future debates be set up to matter more — and matter more in all the right ways.
Past surveys by Pew Research, the Poynter Institute and other firms show results that most voters who watch the debates are already pre-committed to one or the other candidate. The surveys show that debates have a slight impact to “nudge” or “sway” undecided voters. That means in a political race as close as the Trump-Harris contest that a “debate nudge” could be very valuable to a winning candidate.
We know about all the past historical presidential debates that people always bring up every new election year. The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate is always brought up, just like the one in 1980 where Ronald Reagan kept telling incumbent president Jimmy Carter, “there you go again.”
In 1992, eventual winner Bill Clinton separated himself from the three-man field with senior George H.W. Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot by using the debate to place himself in the middle as the safest choice.
Those are all older presidential debates but the ones with the most historical heft might be the more recent ones of Obama versus Bush in 2008, Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump in 2016 and climaxing with the two debates this year with Trump versus Biden and the most recent one between Harris and Trump.
Ask Biden if debates matter
If you still think debates can’t determine the outcome of an election, don’t try to tell that to Joe Biden who suffered 90 minutes of self-destruction during the June 27, 2024 debate that not only lost him an election but also essentially ended his 50-year political career.
And then just two months later, as in last week, Biden’s replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris firmly planted herself as a strong and surging candidate to win the 2024 election over Donald Trump with a classic textbook debate performance.
You can’t say the Harris-Trump debate can’t matter all that much because 67 million TV viewers saw and heard what happened. You saw it, so what’s your honest opinion?
The day after
For all those who still claim debates can’t change election outcomes, we’ll grant one caveat. We’ll submit that presidential debates on their own don’t matter as much as what gets said and written about them the next day. They don’t keep a running score during debates tallying which candidate wins the most points or final debate score. But journalists, poll watchers, leading politicians and others all weigh in with their personal scorecards the next morning — or even later that same night.
That is how we know Kamala Harris “won” her debate over Donald Trump last week (Sept. 10, 2024.) It was ruled a unanimous “knockout” by all the day-after commentators and pollsters — even over at FOX News.
It was the same “day after” response and media analysis that boosted a young, unproven junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who went on to defeat an incumbent vice president in 1960. In words and policy statements, VP Richard Nixon was probably the more confident and competent debator, but the press wrote mostly about John F. Kennedy’s exuberance, energy and his engaging personality. Kennedy went on to win one of the nation’s closest-ever presidential elections with a margin of 113,000 popular votes out of 69 million cast. Kennedy won fewer states than Nixon but he won more Electoral College votes.
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
When it comes to famous American political debates, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 have probably been written about the most, so much so that they are widely considered the standard.
A young Abraham Lincoln, new to the House of Representatives, challenged incumbent U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois U.S. Senate race. The two men engaged in seven separate debates, one in each congressional district of the state. The debates attracted very large crowds that totaled as many as 18,000 people at one session. Each candidate, in alternate rounds, talked for 90 minutes, offering classic oratory and sharply differing views on slavery, westward expansion, states’ rights and federal government limitations.
But, once again, it was the “day after” reviews and responses that likely mattered more than the day’s oratory. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in a time of advancing technology that added impact and exposure. These were the first debates where telegraph wires transmitted the speeches to Chicago and back east to other big cities and Washington, D.C. New railroad connections accommodated travel for the large debate crowds and also offered same-day passage for news reporters to file next day newspaper stories in hundreds of newspapers.
Lincoln lost the senate election to Douglas but he won the “next day” newspaper reviews and built a personae and reputation that got him elected as president just two years later.
Bring on the debates
Formal debates are as old as civilization itself and were central to the governing structures of Greek city-states, the Roman empire, Chinese dynasties and in ancient India. Debates also were prevalent in academic settings and became formalized as debating clubs in early universities and colleges. Parliamentary-style governments still rely on debate-style deliberations and decision-making procedures.
Wouldn’t it be great if all our domestic and spousal arguments could be officiated by debate rules with a moderator, time limits, microphones with off-on switches and rules of decorum? All the debate rules could be printed on wedding licenses and added to formal wedding vows. Fat chance, huh?
Since the 1976 general election, debates between presidential candidates have been a formal part of U.S. presidential campaigns. The League of Women Voters moderated the 1976, 1980 and 1984 presidential debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was established in 1987 and organized debates for both the vice president and president candidates for all elections until this year.
Under CPD jurisdiction almost all the debates were held on college campuses and were moderated by a mix of national media representatives, selected by the CPD. The televised debates were scheduled for 90 minutes with no commercial breaks. The CPD is a nonprofit, bi-partisan organization that now faces an uncertain future after being sidestepped by both the Democrat and Republican parties this year due to disagreements over scheduling.
The future of presidential debates?
Besides the uncertain status of the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, what might the overall future of presidential debates look like in this age of splintered media channels, social media misinformation and the uncontrollable future of Artificial Intelligence? How could anyone carve out 90 minutes of sane, fact-based dialogue and principled policy debate from all the divisive noise, conspiracy theory sideshows and pre-cooked anti-truths?
Right now, we can’t even predict the remainder of the 2024 campaign and debate schedule. A big part of it seems to be resting on Donald Trump’s mood, over whether there might be another Trump-Harris debate.
We hope there will be another face-off behind lecterns on a neutral stage where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris can meet for only the second time in their whole career and lives. We want this meeting to happen so we can win our bet that Trump will refuse to shake Harris’ hand a second time.
— Rollie Atkinson
9-14-2024
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I know your brain won’t rest and you always have a pleasant assembly of words to tell your ideas.
Thank you.
These events we name debates choose questions that aren’t too upsetting, which is part of why the League of Women Voters was eliminated; they were too serious.
The Oxford Union has debates too. A notable one, below, considers the morality of nuclear weapons, with the Prime Minister of New Zealand debating a “representative “ of the USA, Jerry Falwell. Not what we citizens get from our mainstream media…
https://youtu.be/sCZFPfe0LvA?si=WB5I6vySrt8PN5cJ
Glad you keep writing.