There's no no question that a lot of people that
tune into presidential debates are basically acting as cheerleaders for
the candidates that they prefer,
and nothing that occurs during the 90 minute debate is
going to change or influence who they're going to vote
for.
The question before us is which point of view and
which party do we want to leave the United States?
Mr. Nixon, would you like to comment on that statement?
I have no comment.
It's very unlikely that somebody who walks into the debate
thinking I'm going to vote for President Biden or President
Trump is going to change and go for the other
candidates that that is the kind of effect we don't
see happen.
There is a little bit of an effect on uncommitted
voters.
The problem is that there aren't all that many of
them.
Really what's going to matter is,
is being able to turn out your base.
What we see is people who were not thinking of
going to vote being turned into voters,
right? So spurring people into participation.
We do see that kind of effect.
In the in the recent cycles,
kind of deploying clever zingers,
finding a moment that goes viral is the goal of
all the different campaigns,
because maybe not everyone's going to watch it.
Not even the media are trying to find different clips
or parts of the debate that can be shown over
and over in a viral loop.
I think CNN's decision to hold the audience from the
debate is a fantastic idea because all of a sudden
the two candidates are not.
Really putting on a show,
they're actually having a conversation.
The election is decided by 10s of thousands of voters
in the US in certain states,
right? So you have very few uncommitted voters that are
swayable by the debate,
but those voters that may be swayed by the debate
may actually make a big,
big difference.