Political Learning from Presidential Debates

Political Behavior volume 21, pages67–89(1999)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper focuses on an important aspect of presidential debates: the degree to which voters are able to glean candidate information from them. Using an open-ended measure of candidate information, the analysis tests hypotheses concerning the impact of debates on information acquisition among the mass public for all debates from 1976 to 1996. The findings indicate that people do learn from debates and that learning is affected by the context in which the information is encountered. Specifically, early debates generate more learning than do subsequent debates, and the public tends to learn more about candidates with whom they are relatively unfamiliar than about better-known candidates.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI, 53201

    Thomas M. Holbrook

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  1. Thomas M. Holbrook
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Holbrook, T.M. Political Learning from Presidential Debates. Political Behavior 21, 67–89 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023348513570

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Keywords

  • Information Acquisition
  • Political Psychology
  • Early Debate
  • Subsequent Debate
  • Mass Public