Suchergebnisse

General election presidential debates are highly argumentative encounters filled with evidence, argument, and refutation. While the candidates come to the debates armed with evidence and arguments in support of their positions, it is unclear how the audience interprets the information. This paper reports the findings from a study of the first presidential debate in 2012. Participants evaluated the strength of arguments made by Obama and Romney, as well as which candidate won each segment of the debate. The study confirms that viewers do not dispassionately evaluate the debate, but instead are driven by partisan interests that lead them to find their candidate made stronger arguments and won the debate. Partisan motivations overwhelmed the structural changes in the 2012 debate format designed to encourage more in-depth discussion of the topic.

This study reports the reactions by registered voters to the second presidential debate in 2004. Respondents used a continuous response system that provided feedback in 1-second intervals. These data were compared to a transcript of the debate to identify the strongest and weakest arguments made by candidates both for their own party and for the opposition party. Results suggest that political affiliation strongly influences audience reaction in two ways: (a) Republicans always rated Bush's comments higher than Democrats, whereas Democrats always rated Kerry's comments higher than Republicans; and (b) Republicans believed that Bush won the debate, whereas Democrats believed that Kerry won the debate. This research provides new support for the conclusion that debates tend to reinforce the preexisting positions of the audience but offers a warning that the amount of learning that takes place could be limited.