Turns out primary debates matter way more than the generals

[Pryderi]

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/6/9100279/primary-debates-matter-watch

Only 40 percent of participants stuck with their original voting intention after watching the primary debates. The other 60 percent either changed candidate preference or became undecided.

[Fred Sanders]

1. There is this one mysterious and elusive thing people forget to consider - the calendar.

[virtualobserver]

2. what is your point?

[99th_Monkey]

3. But, but ... I saw on DU that "debates don't matter"

with fancy graphs and everything "proving" this fallacy.

Thank you for clearing this up. Not that I expect the debate-haters
to listen, but still..

[winter is coming]

4. There are no debate-haters, only debate-fearers. n/t

[artislife]

9. Yup nt

[onehandle]

5. Debates are historically inconsequential and definitely make no difference in 'long odds races.'

That presidential debates can be “game changers” is a belief almost universally held by political pundits and strategists. Political scientists, however, aren’t so sure. Indeed, scholars who have looked most carefully at the data have found that, when it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2012/ten_miles_square/do_presidential_debates_really039413.php

If anything, debates delete candidates who are say, oh 30-40 points behind.

Pretty pictures and splashy video from linkbait site 'vox.com' though.

[1StrongBlackMan]

7. See Post #6. n/t

[jeff47]

10. Good job skipping over the difference between primary and general election debates.

Leave that in and your link would just be repeating what the OP said.

[winter is coming]

13. If they're inconsequential, then the DNC should lift the exclusivity clause.

If it doesn't really matter whether candidates participate in debates not sanctioned by the DNC, why penalize candidates who choose to do so?

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. That makes sense. Primary debate viewers are more about choices among favorable options ...

i.e., considering approaches and priorities regarding the same goal; whereas, general election debate viewers won't/don't see the candidate with opposing their initial candidate as working towards the same goal.

But that is not what the debate on Democratic Party debates is about ... no one is suggesting that Democrats won't have primary debates.

I'll have to look more into the study to see if they queried whether the number or timing of debates mattered.

[artislife]

11. I agree

It is the primaries where both parties decide which flavor of dem or repub they are going to be. Usually the parties stay with their party.

The independent or turned off voter will view all the debates differently.

So when we decided as a party each election who we would run in the general, we were debating amongst ourselves. Lots of interest in getting our issues represented by our candidate to go forward in the general.

Once everything is decided, it is just debates between the parties to make last minute gains from the pool of undecideds that will actually vote. And maybe to lure back those who lost in the primaries.

[jwirr]

15. One other question is if the questioner asks the hard questions. I have

seen too many debates where the questioner was either out of their league or just did not want to ask hard questions. I think we see more of that in the R debates than we do in the Democratic debates but it is still an important issue.

[rogue emissary]

8. The Number of debates doesn't really predict a general election win.

I found this article that list the number of primary debates since the 80's. It doesn't conclusively show any connection between the number of debates and likelihood to victory in Nov. I think if we had two or three times the amount of candidates we would need more.

This all comes down to the DNC penalizing the candidates that would attend an unsanctioned debate. The article highlights the fact that for '04 and '08 primary seasons the DNC only sanctioned six debates.

From 548 site

PRIMARY DEBATES ELECTION
YEAR DEM REP
1980 — 6
1984 11 —
1988 22 7
1992 12 —
1996 — 7
2000 9 13
2004 15 —
2008 25 21
2012 — 20
2016 6 9

Link is below.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/is-six-democratic-debates-too-few/

[Pryderi]

14. Why is DNC punishing candidates that participate in unsanctioned debates this year and not others?

From your link:

This year, the DNC is threatening to bar candidates who participate in unsanctioned debates from the sanctioned ones. Also, Clinton is the strongest nonincumbent front-runner in the modern era. She has less incentive to put herself out there and make a potentially fatal mistake.

[rogue emissary]

16. The RNC's 2012 disaster.

From the Link.

It’s also the same number of sanctioned debates Republicans tried to schedule in the 2012 cycle.

They're doing it to avoid the RNC perceived mistakes.

Right or wrong many believe 2012 primary season length and optics hurt Romney. That primary is still referred to as a "clown show".

So I can see why the DNC would want a small number of controlled debates. I don't agree that it was done just to help Clinton.

Why do other candidates want more debates? History doesn't show more debates equaling a general election win.

[Fawke Em]

12. Many of us here knew this...

but I'm glad to see you post this so we can show others who shall remain nameless who don't "get" this.

Thanks!

[AtomicKitten]

17. K&R You bet they matter.

The some 26 debates in 2007/08 provided a thorough airing of difference between the candidates. At the very least, Debs WS should remove the exclusivity clause. As it stands, it reflects poorly on the candidate they are trying to protect.

[Doctor_J]

18. That explains clearly why the Clinton campaign doesn't want debates

Interesting post