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Findings show voters update their views on candidates' issues and character traits, suggesting a strong educational impact of debates.
Scholars have studied the educational value of televised presidential debates for decades. The past three election cycles, with the addition of Donald Trump’s unconventional rhetorical style, these concerns have only magnified. We utilize the 2024 June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as well as the 2024 September debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to determine whether viewers update their perceptions of where the candidates’ stand on traditional policy issues (such as the economy, abortion, and foreign policy) as well as emergent issues (such as concerns about aging leaders and the state of democratic institutions in the United States). We also compare issue-learning to image-learning, operationalized as updated views regarding a candidate’s character traits. We find that voters significantly update their perceptions of candidates on both their issue stances and perceptions of their character. Furthermore, we find that issue learning was greater than image learning in 2024.
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Gardiner et al. (2026) studied this question.
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