5 Questions to Keep in Mind While Watching Thursday Night’s Debate - Rob Horowitz
Rób Horowitz, MINDSETTER™
5 Questions to Keep in Mind While Watching Thursday Night’s Debate - Rob Horowitz
1) Does Joe Biden exceed the low expectations for his performance? Judging by Donald Trump and his allies’ 11th hour attempt to say that after all Joe Biden is a pretty good debater, even the former president knows that his non-stop attacks on President Biden as someone who is severely cognitively impaired and belongs in a nursing home, not the Oval Office have contributed to setting too low a bar. These attacks do not come out of thin air. President Biden looks and sounds every bit his 81 years and there is an obvious energy deficit in comparison to a nearly as old Donald Trump. Nearly 3-out-of-4 voters say that Mr. Biden will be too old to be effective as president in his next term. As a result, for Joe Biden to exceed the expectations on Thursday night, he doesn’t need to shine; all he needs to do is be lucid. That is a big advantage.
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2) Does Donald Trump stay within bounds? One reason that Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by a substantial majority of American voters is that most people do not like his combative, combustible, sometimes, just plain rude, and nearly always falsehood-ridden style of communication. The costliest to Mr. Trump’s electoral fortunes example of this was his disastrous performance in the first general election debate in 2020. His refusal to adhere to the debate rules, leading to several admonishments by the moderator Chris Wallace, as well as his obnoxiousness throughout made it the worst debate performance by a major party candidate in modern debate history. Here is a place where Mr. Trump can benefit from exceeding expectations by adopting a measured tone, keeping his attacks within bounds, and resisting the telling of obvious untruths. If past is prologue, that is a tall order for the former president. But if he can manage it, it will pay political dividends.
3) Can President Trump keep sufficient focus on the economy and immigration? While the former president’s advantages on the economy and immigration have significantly narrowed, he is still perceived by a majority of voters to be better than President Biden. The more these issues are the focus of the debate, the better it should be for Donald Trump. The former president should return to these topics whenever given any kind of opening. It would be good if on the economy in particular, he could unveil some sensible sounding policy ideas---ones that go beyond the across-the-board tariffs he is advocating that economists regardless of ideology agree would hit the middle class hard.
4) Can Joe Biden keep sufficient focus on abortion and protecting democracy? Joe Biden has large advantages over Donald Trump on which candidate voters think would do a better job on abortion and protecting our democracy. If he is able to keep returning to Trump’s role in overturning Roe v. Wade and the further danger to reproductive rights he represents, as well as the former president’s continuing insistence that he won the 2020 election and his responsibility for January 6, that bodes well for him. Keeping the focus on protecting democracy creates other advantages for President Biden. It is the area where Mr. Trump is most likely to make obviously false statements and absurd claims that will then be used by the mainstream media in post-debate coverage and that can be amplified on social media.
5) Is there a gap between polling on who won the debate and the composition of poll samples? Research shows that the main effect of debates is to reinforce existing candidate preferences. If you support a candidate going into the debate, you are likely to think that candidate won the debate. So, in a race like this, where the candidates are essentially tied in the polls going in, if a substantial majority thinks one of the candidates won the debate in polling that reflects the composition of the general electorate, that would be telling. Often, instant polls of debate watchers, however, have a disproportionate share of Democrats or Republicans. When evaluating these polls to tease out the true debate impacts, be sure to examine the composition of the sample. Additionally, keep in mind that as people --many who did not watch the debate closely or at all----absorb the news coverage, the perceptions of who won or lost the debate often changes markedly from the instant poll results released the night of the debate.