Will the presidential debate matter? Probably not.
As we near the first debate of a reset presidential race, anticipation and armchair punditry are growing. From the debate about the debate’s microphones to each campaign’s efforts to set expectations in favor of their candidate, we’re hurtling towards a nationally televised showdown between former President Trump and Vice President Harris — and a predictable media frenzy over any possible result.
In the aftermath of the first presidential debate, which turned the entire election upside down, there’s understandable hype for the sequel. The problem is sequels rarely live up to the original — and presidential debates don’t actually decide elections.
For years, increasing numbers of studies have shown that, for all the attention we lavish on debates, they just don’t shape voters' choice in a meaningful way. Most voters don’t watch debates, and the few who do have already decided which candidate to support. In a two-party country that has grown increasingly more polarized, there are very few Republican voters who would watch Harris best Trump on the debate stage and switch to her camp.
Although the Trump-Biden bout did indeed change this race, it’s the exception that proves the rule — as the uniquely early nature of the debate, paired with the public’s concern over Biden’s on-stage performance, led it to make a real impact. (There’s also some strong evidence that Biden’s polling slide wasn’t caused by the debate itself, but rather by the subsequent media coverage and evaporation of political support from Democratic leaders.)
Throughout the history of televised debates, a series of myths have taken root that inflated the gravity of these confrontations. We’ve repeatedly told ourselves that John F. Kennedy’s narrow 1960 victory over Richard Nixon was powered by his telegenic appearance in the first presidential debate, contrasted with Nixon’s haggard visage. Yet the main point of evidence behind that story — that Nixon won over radio audiences, who heard his more substantive answers without being influenced by style points — relies entirely on a single poll that research has shown held Republican bias.
The Kennedy/Nixon debates were an iconic moment in American history, but the evidence that they seriously shaped vote choice in favor of Kennedy is shaky at best.
We don’t need to look all the way back to 1960 to see this cognitive dissonance about presidential debates rear its head. John Kerry bested George W. Bush in the 2004 debates — he still lost the election. Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the 2016 debates — she still lost the Electoral College and that election. Time and time again, we’ve failed to see a legitimate correlation between debate performance and electoral performance.
As much as I look forward to Harris eviscerating Trump’s falsehoods on Tuesday night, the reality is that eager partisans like me won’t decide this election. It’s moderate voters who are tuned out of politics and spread across the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina (and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District).
These voters will not be sitting down with a bowl of popcorn to watch Trump and Harris battle over tax policy. Some will tune in; some will view it through brief excerpted clips diffused across cable news, social media and campaign ads. To the extent that this debate can actually affect voter behavior, it’ll be through the images and exchanges that each campaign leverages in their communications in the weeks to follow.
Will that change how the media covers the debate, and how we react to it in real-time on social media? Nope. We’re drawn to obsess over debates because they are, in fact, great reality TV.
The stakes are high. The lights are on. The candidates are incentivized to go for each other’s jugular. From Ronald Reagan telling Jimmy Carter “There you go again” in 1980 to Mitt Romney getting brutally fact checked by Barack Obama over the Benghazi attack in 2012, debates have offered us some of the most enduring moments in our history. You can’t blame news junkies for consuming political catnip.
But as I’ve written previously, we should be wary of the increasingly performative turn in our politics, where we focus far more on the force of a candidate’s rhetoric rather than his or her policies. In an election where one candidate — who previously led an insurrection against our democracy — is openly longing for an authoritarian presidency that will gut basic freedoms for millions of Americans, there’s much more on the line than style points.
Steve Israel represented New York in the House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015.
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