Obama and Romney during the infamous Denver Debate, October 2012. Photograph by Scout Tufankjian for Obama for America, via Flickr.

Though perhaps not known for his political expertise, it was comedian Seth Meyers who best summed up the general consensus on the first presidential debate of the 2012 US elections when he declared, “Well, you have to hand it to Mitt Romney… because President Obama sure did.” With newspapers practically falling over themselves to break the news that “Romney surges ahead in the polls”, one look at the headlines would have led the casual observer to believe that a Romney victory was inevitable.

Perhaps the British would offer a more cautious view: although it may seem a distant memory now, Nick Clegg received enormous praise for his “game changing” debate performance, where he was able to pit David Cameron and Gordon Brown against each other. Cameron was left racing to keep up, while Brown became a laughing stock, unashamedly squeezing an “I agree with Nick” into every other sentence.

In hindsight, perhaps this was not the “game changer” we thought – a hung parliament, which had been predicted long before the debates, indeed came into fruition. If we compare this result to the numerous US debates, however, is the apparent unimportance of the debates simply a British quirk?

Lessons from the past

Contrary to what headlines and Twitter trends indicate, the results of election debates are rarely, if ever, determinative of the election result itself; this point has been stressed by many political scientists, as well as the editors of Gallup (the USA’s leading polling organisation). No matter how many newspapers lampooned George Bush when he infamously checked his watch during the 1992 debate, for example, such gaffes do not substantively affect the election outcome.

It is easy to assume that the debates must have some effect. The 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debate is, for the most part, cited as the exception to the rule. Nixon’s ill-fated decision not to wear stage make-up (having only recently been discharged from hospital) supposedly imprinted him in the minds of the voters as the pale, tired old man who simply could not match Kennedy’s charisma.

The reality was not so dramatic. As John Sides, of George Washington University, cogently observes, “… debates aren’t the only thing that voters are hearing and seeing in the weeks before the election”. This has particular relevance to the 1960 election where the close competition made it impossible to state with certainty that the debates had turned the tide in Kennedy’s favour.

21^st Century Problems

The question remains: why are the debates not game changers? Firstly, the viewers themselves have changed. In the Kennedy/Nixon debates, most voters had never even seen their candidate speak before; today, a click on YouTube finds Obama singing Al Green. Our massive exposure to the candidates means that debates are no longer an exclusive source of information and so are less helpful than in the past.

Secondly, moderators are not always effective. Jim Lehrer’s laissez-faire attitude in the 2012 Denver debate resulted in the flaunting of time limits, meaning that some questions had to be abandoned. If Lehrer had exercised more control and pushed the candidates to answer the questions fully and concisely, voters might have had a wider breadth of political information at their disposal.

Another key problem with election debates is a tactic known as “showboating”: following the 2012 debates, the majority of public discourse seemed to fixate on how Obama is not much of a romantic when it comes to anniversaries and is more than a little sarcastic (“The 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back”), whilst Romney likes Big Bird and thinks that the solution to sexism lies in “binders full of women”. Though entertaining, this is hardly useful in helping the voters to make political decisions. Moreover, this is by no means exclusive to America – the French election debate involved Sarkozy and Hollande simply trading insults: again, this is of little use.

A lost cause?

The risk of encouraging political ignorance, however, is not just cause for abandoning election debates: they have the potential to be an extremely useful tool for voters. Thomas Holbrook, author of Do Campaigns Matter?, argues that particularly for the less politically-informed, debates can provide useful information, such as on the identity of lesser-known opposing candidates.

Two changes to the debate format could help to emphasise this information and separate it from less relevant factors. Firstly, a more forceful moderator is necessary: if voters want answers, the moderator must be prepared and able to get them.

Secondly, the influence of the media needs to be reduced. The obsession with the demeanour and body language of the candidates is in no small part due to media hype. CNN, for example, aired a five-minute discussion on the candidates’ body language during the first debate. The media makes inconsequential details appear important by overanalysing them, thereby detracting attention from the substance of the debate.

However, there is no easy solution to this: it seems unlikely that the media will cease to focus on the more dramatic elements of the debate simply because they hinder political learning. The only other solution, as John Sides suggests, is for people to listen to the debates rather than watch them, although he doubts the chances of this occurring.

“Forward!”

The debates are currently not as helpful as they could be and there is only so much that a format alteration can improve. Ultimately, the debates are supposed to be an aid for the electorate: an instrument to clarify and contrast candidates’ policies. If voters want to be informed by future debates, they need to change their attitude towards them: they must start viewing them less as entertainment and more as the learning tool that they should be.