The second presidential debate airs tomorrow evening. It will be the first debate since the Democratic Party pivoted to make Vice President Harris the nominee.
Experts say presidential debates typically don’t have a major effect on the election, but it was President Biden’s poor performance at the previous debate against former President Trump that at least arguably, led to him stepping out of the race.
Dustin Carnahan is an associate professor of communication at Michigan State University who studies the impact of political communication on the public. WKAR’s Arjun Thakkar spoke with Carnahan about what to expect from tomorrow’s debate.
Interview Highlights
On the debate's potential impact on the overall race
"[O]ne of the candidates has really only been in the race a little over a month, has not had that same level of familiarity with voters who are probably still trying to feel Harris out to determine, okay, is this going to be an extension of the Biden administration, or is she going to do some things that are different? What types of different priorities or policies or just general governing style is she going to have? Should she be president in two months? And so I do think that this has the potential to, especially on her side, to be not a make-or-break moment, but a moment that could either kind of push her forward with a lot of momentum, or perhaps bring her back down to where now we're in a real neck and neck race for the rest of the cycle."
On how informative presidential debates are for voters
"There are bumps in knowledge gained about the candidate from presidential debates. And the interesting thing about this is that it's not so much from debate exposure itself, it's more so from the news coverage and the media attention that the debates generate ... they tend to be more about kind of peripheral types of issues ... but even so, oftentimes that information does matter, especially to voters who who aren't as plugged in to the political process.
On Michigan's swing state role in the debate
"I think you're absolutely going to see some discussion of job creation, especially in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue that is very, very important to to many voters in Michigan, where we know the economy consistently over many, many election cycles, is the number one predictor of what determines how people vote. If you're looking specifically at issues and policies. You're also going to probably hear quite a bit about Israel and Palestine. I think there's some question about what will Harris do, should she be elected, with regard to managing the conflict, and essentially what types of solutions she would be willing to support."
Interview Transcript
Arjun Thakkar: Let's start with the elephant in the room. This is the first presidential debate since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. How do you think that will affect how Americans engage with the debate?
Dustin Carnahan: So, generally speaking, debates tend to appeal mostly to audiences who are already plugged in, and so most of the audience is likely to have some opinion of Harris, and almost the entire audience will have an opinion of Trump. That said, I do think because of her status as a lesser known candidate, not having the same sort of record or past as Biden, will make the debate on Tuesday more important for her, specifically in terms of being able to define her candidacy, and who she is and what she would stand for upon being elected in 2024 if that were to happen. So, I do think the stakes are a little higher, and I think voters are going to be paying a lot of attention, trying to learn more about who she is, what she'll do, and it could have perhaps a bigger effect on their perceptions of her relative to what we would see in a traditional presidential campaign.
Thakkar: This year's debates are the first since the 1980s that are not being planned by the Bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. Can you tell us why that matters?
Carnahan: The CPD, generally speaking, is a bipartisan group that attempts to find common ground or compromise in terms of what the format and expectations of debates will be. Essentially, they've been cast aside primarily because the Trump campaign and the RNC decided that they should not be in charge of planning debates. They accused them of perhaps not acting in ways that were beneficial to both parties, being perhaps biased against the RNC and the Trump campaign. And so what you have is a situation in which the candidates themselves have had to try to come together, and their campaigns, to negotiate what the terms of the debate could be. And so you get some unique changes to this debate relative to past years. For example, there'll be no audience as there wasn't in June as well. And you'll have a situation in which mics will be cut off unless the candidate is being addressed with a question. And so these format changes probably aren't going to be terribly important to how people perceive the candidates' performances, but the fact that it really it's creating a situation, rather than having this outside group helping plan and orchestrate these debates in a way that both campaigns find suitable, it's almost now an ad hoc we have to get together and have these conversations. And so we don't know what we're going to get. How many debates, what's what they're going to look like, and as a consequence, it's going to be a little harder to predict what these debates will look like now and into the future.
Thakkar: What impact do you think with the changes that you described, like, you know, the mics being cut off, the limited ability to interrupt, what impact do you think that has on on the format and how Americans perceive these debates with these pretty substantial format changes?
Carnahan: Well, hypothetically, the ability to speak in a more uninterrupted fashion should help the candidates make their case in their own words, free from intervention or interruption from the other. I think one potential outcome of this decision in this current debate's structure with Harris and Trump on Tuesday is that it will perhaps avoid a situation in which President Trump comes across as interrupting too often, and he was criticized for this in 2020 and 2016 as well. He kind of is off the cuff and kind of a very spontaneous sort of candidate. And I think in some regards, that endears him to some people, but it also very much turned a lot of people away in previous debates. And so without having that ability to interrupt, you know, it also allows the other side to perhaps define, the Harris campaign, to perhaps define her campaign and her candidacy in a way free from interjection from Trump. And so I do think that there are some potential ramifications here in terms of being able to hear from the candidate's own words without having those sorts of interruptions. But again, in terms of big effects, I'm not sure there's really any to be expected. I could be wrong, right? And there could always be a situation in which somebody really stumbles over their words and they may not have the ability to respond in a minute-and-a-half in response to a question, where, in that situation, perhaps an interruption from your opponent would be welcomed. But I don't expect there's going to be probably any big changes or big differences in how people will perceive the debate.
Thakkar: Presidential debates are advertised as a way for the public to put the candidates head-to-head and test their mental acuity. But do you think Americans actually come away being more informed after after watching the debates?
Carnahan: So this is a great question, because the research on this over the past several years, several presidential election cycles, suggests that there are bumps in knowledge gained about the candidate from presidential debates. And the interesting thing about this is that it's not so much from debate exposure itself, it's more so from the news coverage and the media attention that the debates generate. It's hard to imagine people not coming into contact with any debate-related content, whether it be on social media or even in just in discussions with friends or family members. So people do learn, and what we've seen is that learning tends to be more profound, or the effects are larger, primarily for lower knowledge audiences. In other words, it's a way for them to kind of narrow the gap between themselves and perhaps more informed or more politically attuned audiences. Even so, again, the effects aren't particularly large. They tend to be more about kind of peripheral types of issues. You don't see understanding in terms of rich, deep contextual understanding of policy, for example, and and so it does tend to be more about kind of general position placement, knowing a little bit more about the candidates and their qualifications. But even so, oftentimes that information does matter, especially to voters who who aren't as plugged in to the political process.
Thakkar: We're less than 60 days out from the general election. How big of an impact do you think tomorrow's debate could have on the race?
Carnahan: Given the very unique circumstances of this campaign? I think tomorrow's debate could definitely be, I don't want to say terribly influential or overly influential, but could have a bigger effect than we might expect in a traditional presidential debate. And that's because one of the candidates has really only been in the race a little over a month, has not had that same level of familiarity with voters who are probably still trying to feel Harris out to determine, okay, is this going to be an extension of the Biden administration, or is she going to do some things that are different? What types of different priorities or policies or just general governing style is she going to have? Should she be president in two months? And so I do think that this has the potential to, especially on her side, to be not a make-or-break moment, but a moment that could either kind of push her forward with a lot of momentum, or perhaps bring her back down to where now we're in a real neck and neck race for the rest of the cycle. And so I do think it's a pretty important moment. And again, I think this is different from any normal presidential cycle because of the fact that we just, I think voters don't feel like they know as much about Harris as they would in the traditional race, where we've seen and known these candidates for months or longer.
Thakkar: And I do have to ask as a more local angle, as you know, both vice president Harris and former President Trump are campaigning pretty heavily to win Michigan. What role do you think the state might play in in tomorrow's debate?
Carnahan: So I think you're absolutely going to see some discussion of job creation, especially in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue that is very, very important to to many voters in Michigan, where we know the economy consistently over many, many election cycles, is the number one predictor of what determines how people vote. If you're looking specifically at issues and policies. You're also going to probably hear quite a bit about Israel and Palestine. I think there's some question about what will Harris do, should she be elected, with regard to managing the conflict, and essentially what types of solutions she would be willing to support. Given that we have a rather large Muslim population, especially in the Detroit and Dearborn areas, those voters are important to winning the state, and I do think those answers around that topic are going to matter to them. They're still learning and trying to figure out what exactly a Harris presidency would look like with regard to Israel and Palestine, and I think that's going to be really important during the debate tomorrow.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
