A political debate is a conversation where opposing parties discuss ideas and positions to arrive at some form of consensus on public issues. Debate is a fundamental part of the electoral process, and is often seen as the only way to effectively inform voters about candidates’ views on social and economic issues.
Politics is a highly polarized environment, with citizens divided over how to best address critical issues that affect them. Historically, the ferocity of political debate has outpaced politicians’ understanding of the problems and their ability to assess potential solutions. This has created a gap between the expectations of the electorate and the actual state of the problem, and this gap has been the root cause of much policy failure.
In order to bridge this gap, there has been a need for a more productive form of political debate. Currently, most of our public policy discussions are done through the media and are conducted at a pace that allows the media to choose which questions are asked, limiting the scope of the discussion to what is politically expedient. The goal of our research is to understand how people construe political debate, and identify what conditions are needed for productive political debate to occur.
The political debate was established as a key element of the election process in 1987 when the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was created “to ensure, for the benefit of the American voter, that general elections for President and Vice President are informed by a series of substantive and nonpartisan debates between or among the major candidates.” There are three traditional formats for a debate: the moderator format, where the candidates are seated at podiums across from each other; the panelist format, where a single person asks questions of the candidates; and the town hall meeting format, where members of the audience ask questions.
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