Beyond learning and persona: extending the scope of presidential debate effects

Research on the effects of watching presidential debates tends to show that these messages can foster learning about the candidates' issue positions and influence voters' impressions of the candidates. This study uses a pretest/posttest design to assess more subtle effects of watching a 2000 presidential debate on attitudes and vote intention. Leadership and overall policy stance became more important factors in vote choice after watching the debate. Specific groups of issues also became more important in vote choice. Viewers reacted to the candidates differentially: Bush enhanced perceptions of his character (but not of his policy positions), while Gore improved perceptions of his policy positions (but not of his character). The data also reveal that the debates increased the confidence of vote choices for those who did not change their preferred candidate over the course of this study (which could make them more likely to vote on election day and/or less likely to change their vote choice). This study demonstrates a variety of potentially important effects of watching presidential debates.