{"id":2012052,"date":"2023-08-25T13:40:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T17:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/analysis-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview-says-pollster\/"},"modified":"2023-08-25T13:44:33","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T17:44:33","slug":"analysis-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview-says-pollster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/analysis-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview-says-pollster\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollster says having 8 people on stage is a group interview, not a debate."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fanalysis-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview-says-pollster%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2012052&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>News\u2064 Analysis<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>Televised presidential debates, like \u200dthe Trump-absent Republican debate on Wednesday, have \u2063been historically viewed as a showcase for voters wanting\u200d to hear a candidate\u2019s response\u200b to\u200d policy questions or sometimes outright attacks. But the format hasn&#8217;t changed significantly since\u200c the \u200bfirst televised Nixon-Kennedy debate almost 63 years to the day \u2062in \u200b1960, with one exception. \u200cThere \u200care now more\u2062 people on the \u2062stage than ever. But in \u200cthe\u200d age\u2062 of \u200csocial media and \u200dinstant analysis, does the televised political\u200c debate format need a reboot?<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>In a \u200c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/rnc-might-skip-network-tv-presidential-debates-in-2024-top-republican-says\/\" title=\"RNC Might Skip Network TV Presidential Debates In 2024, Top Republican Says\">general election debate<\/a> that pits Democrat versus Republican, or Democrat versus Republican \u2063versus Independent, policy usually is the\u2063 focus. But in large primary \u200bdebates, it\u200c tends to be less about policy and more \u2063about character and personalities. This leads\u200d to the question: When you simultaneously\u2062 put eight people \u200don a stage,\u200d can you still call it a debate?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\">Ryan Munce, a president and partner of\u200c the polling\u200c firm\u2064 co\/efficient, who was in \u2064the \u2063audience for \u200bthe Republican debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, told the Epoch Times the answer is \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cIt kind of \u200bdoes, in\u2063 many ways, bother me that\u200b we\u200d still call them debates.\u200c They \u2064aren\u2019t. They\u2019re group interviews and I really think people would rather see \u2063a debate,\u201d he said. \u201cIt&#8217;s \u200ban\u2062 untenable exercise to \u2064have a debate with eight or \u200c12 people\u2062 and a silly \u2064threshold that when you need to have only 1 percent support in a couple of polls, that allows you to be on the national\u200b stage. I\u2019d love \u2063to \u200bsee a smaller group and a true \u2064debate-style format.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"shortcode\">\n<div class=\"border-comp-divider mb-4 mr-4 w-full max-w-[500px] border px-5 py-4 text-[16px] leading-[20px] text-[#262626] md:float-left\">\n<div class=\"mb-3 font-sans text-[16px] font-semibold uppercase leading-[19px] text-[#2F2F2F]\">Related Stories<\/div>\n<div class=\"mb-4 flex gap-2\">\n<div class=\"grow\">\n<div class=\"mb-1 line-clamp-2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/us\/trump-reveals-who-won-the-first-gop-debate-5480651\">Trump\u2063 Reveals\u200c Who Won the First GOP Debate<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"text-comp-caption text-[14px] leading-[18px]\">8\/25\/2023<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"shrink-0 basis-[120px]\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/us\/trump-reveals-who-won-the-first-gop-debate-5480651\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mb-4 flex gap-2\">\n<div class=\"grow\">\n<div class=\"mb-1 line-clamp-2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/us\/5-more-surrender-overnight-at-fulton-county-jail-after-trump-booking-5480645\">All Defendants in Georgia Election RICO \u2064Case Surrender<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"text-comp-caption text-[14px] leading-[18px]\">8\/25\/2023<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"shrink-0 basis-[120px]\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/us\/5-more-surrender-overnight-at-fulton-county-jail-after-trump-booking-5480645\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p3\">Nearly 12.8 million\u2062 people watched the Fox News \u2064Republican primary debate Wednesday night, a significant number \u200bfor a cable-only show but well below the 24 million who watched\u200c the first of the Republican primary debates \u200deight years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Leonie \u2064Huddy, a Professor of Political Science\u2063 at the State\u2064 University\u2063 of New York at Stony\u200b Brook who studies political behavior, \u200ctold the Epoch Times that she believes\u2062 the format, \u200bregardless\u2063 of viewership size, \u2063has survived, and TV ratings can no \u2062<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/analysis-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview-says-pollster\/\" title=\"Pollster says having 8 people on stage is a group interview, not a debate.\">longer measure total audience engagement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"shortcode\">\n<div class=\"lazyload-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"lazyload-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cThere are some\u2064 indications that the recent Republican\u200b debate attracted \u2063an\u2064 unexpectedly large audience,\u201d she said. \u201cIn many ways,\u200c social media \u200dmakes \u2064it easier now than in the past to watch a \u200c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/graham-green-fraud-and-the-climate-lockdown\/\" title=\"GRAHAM: \u2018Green Fraud\u2019 And The Climate Lockdown\">televised debate<\/a>. It can be watched in\u2062 many\u2062 different\u2064 formats, diverse settings, and via innumerable\u2064 online\u2064 sources. Of course, politics\u2064 is not \u2063for everyone. It is important to remember that at \u2063least two-thirds \u2063of\u200c eligible Americans fail \u200dto vote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/im-kind-of-a-jerk-carlson-mocks-implosion-of-2-gop-hopefuls-during-interview-with-beck\/\" title=\"Carlson ridicules downfall of 2 GOP candidates in chat with Beck\">presidential \u200celection<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pollster-8-people-on-a-stage-is-not-a-debate-its-a-group-interview\/\" title=\"Pollster: 8 on stage \u2260 Debate, it's a Group Interview.\">find politics incredibly uninteresting<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">At the \u2062beginning of these\u2064 televised political spectacles, with limited television channels and\u200b no social media, these live debates were, at\u200b times, the first opportunity for a voter \u200cto meet a candidate. But now, with candidates \u2062all over Facebook, Instagram, \u200bYouTube, and TikTok, are voters\u2019 minds already made up before the \u200bdebates?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Post-election \u200dsurveys <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/politics\/2016\/11\/21\/voters-evaluations-of-the-campaign\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s3\">conducted by Pew Research Center<\/span><\/a>  from 1988 to 2020 found that in\u2062 most cases, three-fifths or more voters said the debates\u2063 were very or somewhat helpful \u2064in\u2064 deciding which candidate to vote for. Pew \u200dpoints to 1992 as the outlier, when 70 percent of voters said the three-way\u200d debates that year \u2063between Bill Clinton, \u2064George \u200bH.W. Bush, and Ross Perot were \u201cat least\u2063 somewhat helpful.\u201d That compares to the 2016 race when Pew polls found only 10 percent \u2062of voters said they had definitively made\u200d up their minds \u201cduring or just after\u201d \u200dthe presidential debates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Ms. Huddy says that though multiple\u2063 channels are available for voters to learn about \u200bcandidates, the televised debates still hold their attention. \u201cThere is a lot of constant\u2062 information out \u2063there \u200cabout political candidates, but many people do not tune into \u2062an election until the first debate. \u2063The\u2062 debates are likely to \u200cbe \u2063most important in presidential elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Televised presidential debates remain unchanged since the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. Despite being a platform for policy discussions and attacks, the format has not evolved. The recent Trump-absent Republican debate highlights the historical significance of these debates as a means for voters to gauge candidates&#8217; responses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2335,"featured_media":2012053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2012052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2012052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2012053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2012052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2012052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2012052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}