Q&A of the Day – Will The Presidential Debate Matter?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s entry: Hey Brian, I get why there’s all the pre debate hype and I’ll be interested to see what happens. But is there anything that could happen on that debate stage that would possibly change my vote? Not a chance. Forget Biden falling down on the debate stage. Trump could fall down on the debate stage while being indicted on new criminal charges by Fanni Willis and I’d still vote for him over Joe Biden. But I also bet that’s how the Biden voters feel too. So how much will this debate really matter? I seem to recall that you’ve talked about the importance of debates being overstated in previous cycles.
Bottom Line: It’s a valid question. And it’s not lost on the political candidates. Today’s the day of the big first debate. It’s also the earliest general election presidential debate in the history of the United States. Prior to today, we'd never had a debate occur before the political conventions having taken place. In fact, we’d never had a presidential debate prior to late September. The earliest general election presidential debate in American history took place on September 21st, 1980, between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Given how many similarities there have been between the Biden presidency and Carter’s presidency perhaps it's appropriate there’s one more comparison we can draw from this cycle. But not only is tonight’s debate happening months earlier than the earliest debate previously, even if the second, and final, presidential debate takes place as currently scheduled, the ABC debate September 10th, that debate would still have happened earlier than any other prior to this cycle as well. As for today’s question, how much tonight’s debate will really matter, you make a good point. While we don’t know what will happen on the debate stage tonight – we do have a strong indication that the pool of people who are potentially persuadable is as small as ever.
Yesterday, in my Anatomy of a Swing State update we’re seeing that based on an average of the current polls Donald Trump is shown with a 312 to 226 vote advantage in the Electoral College. Most notably, that’s unchanged for seven consecutive weeks – including his criminal conviction in New York. If Trump’s criminal conviction didn’t move the needle in this race it’s reasonable to think that there’s not much that would and there are several reasons for this. Using Gallup’s data 89% of voters identify with one of the major political parties. There are only 11% who are truly “independent”, broken up into about 3% who identify with minor parties and 8% who truly lack a political predisposition. Independent of the candidates in this race, that necessarily means the pool of persuadable people generally is small. By the time you factor in the candidates, two presidents that just about everyone already has strong feelings about, you’d probably expect that the already extremely small pool of persuadable voters would be that much smaller. Additionally, there are more distractions for Americans than there used to be, thus far fewer voters typically see or hear debates. But with all of that said, I do think this debate likely matters more than many previously. I’ll get to those reasons in a minute but first let’s go to the scorecard to see how debates have impacted presidential races previously.
Here’s the range of impact in the polls of the first Presidential debate, which has historically had the biggest impact, one week later:
Smallest impact:
- Bush vs. Clinton 1992: 0.6%
Largest impact:
- Obama vs. Romney 2012: 5%
The average impact has been 2.5%. Now, 2.5% in especially tight races matters – in fact when applied to the swing states in 2020 it did matter. Four years ago, there was only one presidential debate. It took place on September 29th. Joe Biden’s advantage over Donald Trump grew by 2.2% one week after the debate. Here are the states Joe Biden won by 2.2% or less in 2020. Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Had Trump held those four states he’d currently be President of the United States. It’s obviously an oversimplification to say that the presidential debate four years ago was the final decider in the election – especially in the middle of the pandemic. But there’s at least a statistical case to be made that it might have been. And the reason it mattered as much as it did four years ago is similar to the reason tonight’s debate may matter more than most. The small number of persuadable voters – those who truly are on the fence – wanting to see what Joe Biden may have left.
Four years ago, the joke was that Joe Biden ran his campaign from his basement. Because of the pandemic he didn’t canvas the country and make the regular media rounds campaigning for voters. Instead, banking on Trump’s negative approval rating at the time, he largely sat back at home and let the campaign play itself out. Except for at that debate. That was Joe’s opportunity to go toe-to-toe with President Trump and show what he was about. Based on the polls following the debate, including the ultimate poll, it appeared to work. This is a similar but different situation. This time President Biden is the incumbent who has a historically low approval rating. He’s also the oldest presidential candidate in American history with a regular display of questionable competency that follow him everywhere he goes. His ability to stand on the stage for 90 minutes and go toe-to-toe with Trump will likely go a long way with voters who’d never vote for Trump no matter what, but that also might not vote for Biden if he’s not able to perform. Polls are currently showing that we’re likely to see the largest percentage of the vote break for third party candidates that we’ve had since 1996. We’re also seeing that most often third-party candidates are hurting Joe Biden the most.
Biden’s performance in tonight’s debate, and potentially the second if it ends up happening as currently scheduled, could determine whether former voters of his who no longer support him vote for a third-party candidate or choose not to vote at all. That’s the dynamic that I believe is most important and in play with tonight’s debate.