Case. Its also common in other races, particularly highprofile races, so when was the first president ial debate . Heres a trivia question, historical trivia. Anyone know . Ill give you a hint. No one recognizes those people . This is a false hint. Thats lincoln and douglas. A lot of times people think its the famous Lincoln Douglass debates and they ran against each other for president in 1860. Actually, their debates is when they were both running for the u. S. Senate in illinois in 1858 and had numerous debates around the state of illinois. And so quite an odd situation, they ran against each other for u. S. Senate. Douglas was elected by the legislature at that time, the legislatures appointed the senators and two years later on are on major party tickets. But their debates were published and circulated a lot in 1816. The issues have not really changed a whole lot. The real first president ial debate was between john kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. And now at this point Richard Nixon had been Vice President for eight years, much better known than kennedy, who was a fairly junior u. S. Senator. Though his family was somewhat well known. He wasnt totally unknown but he was not as well known. Nixon made a lot of his political career, had taken advantage of television in his career, believe it or not, and was also known as a very effective and fierce debater. So the Television Networks decided you know, television was now kind of mainstream, everyone had one, and they decided to sponsor a series of debates. I think nixon was very confident and more than willing, even though he was the frontrunner, to engage in these debates because he knew so much more and was such a good debater. He could totally put kennedy in his place. The consensus was these debates helped cost nixon the election, which was a very close election. First of all, it elevated kennedy immediately because now theyre on an even level. The senator and Vice President , also his appearance was much better, much more handsome, better photogenic. There have been studies at the time, or some polls. People who listened to the debate, were talking the first debates, four debates. They were really boring back then. They had really long answers, like two hours long. Theyre more interesting now, i think. But those who listened to the first debate on radio thought nixon won. Those who watched it on tv, felt kennedy won. So the appearances were really important. So after that, there were no more president ial debates for a while. Part of it was something called the fairness doctrine that says if a station licensed by the federal Communications Commission gives a candidate time on the air, they have to give their opponent equal time. And so in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was not anxious to debating. He had a huge lead. He didnt really want to debate Barry Goldwater and they could rely on this fairness doctrine to say, theres no way to do it. Theres ten people running for president. You have all of the Minor Party Candidates and so forth, and its just not practical. So he was able to dodge it successfully. In 1968 when nixon was running again from his experience in 1960, he was not too anxious to debate now. He kind of learned his lesson. In 68 and 72, nixon was on the top of the ticket for the republicans. And so this kind of stopped president ial debates. It looked like maybe 1960 was a oneoff, that it was never going to happen again. But 1976 gerry ford, gerald ford was the president , who took over for nixon when he resigned, he was trailing his opponent by as much as 30 points that summer. And found away around the fairness doctrine, which is if a third party i think any 76 it was the league of women voters, later became the commission on president ial debate, but if the third party held an event and the networks decided to cover it, it wasnt networks giving the candidates a form, they were just covering him. You see how lawyers work, they find a way around it we can do these debates the way we want, major party candidates, without having 20 people on the stage. So being behind, ward was like more than willing to take the chance and debate. And so since 1976 weve had president ial and Vice President ial debates every election season. Usually three president ial and one Vice President and one president ial debate. In 1992 town hall format was instituted for one of the debates and thats kind of stuck. It used to be questions by a panel of reporters. Used to be like four reporters asking questions. More recently theyve gone to a single moderator asking questions. And i think and encouraging a lot more interaction between the candidates. Up through the i would say at least the 1980s, maybe even into the 1990s, answers from candidates were pretty much well prepared and pretty much stock answers and not a lot of interaction. But there have been some times when there was quite a bit of interaction between the candidates that kind of made news. Now, most of the time, by the time of the debates, most voters had made up their mind. I dont know, whats the polling now on trump versus biden . How many undecided are there . Anyone know . Somebody will hurry and look it up. I would guess like 5 or 6 say theyre undecided. Now, it may be more than that because there may be people who say one way or the other, but theyre a little squishy. They could go either way. Do you have a number . 11 , really . Wow. Surprised. But anyway, youve got 89 and that made up their mind, but you have some voters up for grabs. So, television tends to magnify the performance and the personality of the candidates. One observer gave this advice, he said, be liked. Be liked. The emotional content of the debate will remain in the viewers memory for longer than the debates than the ideas being expressed. So, how a candidate comes across is going to make much more of an impression than the words they said, typically. Theres always exceptions. Tv coverage magnifies mistakes or triumphs. When a mistake is made, what happens on the news . Is it one and done . Its replayed constantly, constantly. 24hour news, its constantly replayed. And the comments of the commentators talking about who did well, who won, who lost, who had a big a good night, a bad night, whatever, they can actually change public opinion. So, Polling Research shows that after mistakes have been replayed, the Public Perception of the debates as to who won or loss can actually change. Heres a few examples. After the first 1984 Reagan Mondale debate, a slight majority of viewers thought reagan had won. About 3 thought he won. An hour after negative reviews, the lead switched to mondale by one point. Two days later, polls showed that voters thought mondale had won the debate by a margin of 49 , so it went from reagan winning to pretty even to within a couple of days, mondale winning hugely. And the challenge for reagan in that first debate, it was at that time the oldest candidate. Were now breaking those records this year, but he seemed a little confused and muddled and maybe hes getting too old for the job. He was the incumbent president running for reelection, but his age kind of became an issue. Another famous gaffe was in 1976 in one of these first you know, the redo of debates in 1976 between ford and carter. Now, this was long before the fall of the iron curtain, if you remember that phrase. Its when the soviet union had puppet stakes in Eastern Europe and soviet union controlled Eastern Europe. And ford misspoke. He meant to say the people of Eastern Europe do not feel like they are dominated. They dont accept soviet domination in their hearts but clearly they were dominated. But anyway, he misspoke and he declared Eastern Europe was not under soviet domination. At that point ford had pulled up from 30 points behind to being even or maybe slightly ahead in the race. He stubbornly refused to correct this mistake for several days. And so right after the debate, polls showed ford won the debate by about 1 . After news reports of the debate carried on for several days, 62 said carter had won the debate. So it was this mistake in magnifying. He didnt help himself and would have gone out and said if thats what i said but meant this, he probably would have eliminated a lot of that damage to himself. Okay, so i will show a couple of clips. This first one is kind of a little recap on president ial debates that cnn did before 2012. Okay. Just make sure that doesnt feed back. Can you hear . September 26, 1960, the first televised president ial debate, signaling a new era where appearances matter more than ever and gaffs, however small, are magnified. The goals are the sale for all americans. John kennedy, a young senator from massachusetts, facing off against Vice PresidentRichard Nixon, known to be a fierce debater. But on screen kennedy looks cool and calm, while nixon looks uncomfortable, sweating profusely under the hot studio lights. I think i better shave. Nixon clamors under television in all four debates and kennedy goes on to win the election. In 1976 gerald ford makes this blunder in the debate with georgia governor jimmy carter. There was no soviet domination of Eastern Union and there never will be under a ford administration. Im sorry, the remark became a theme of carters campaign. Blamed many for costing ford the election. In 1980 Ronald Reagan was repeatedly attacked by president carter for his stance on Public Health care. Governor reagan as a matter of fact began his political career campaigning around this nation against medicare. But reagan wins fans and the election by staying cool. There you go again. Four years later, president reagan again uses humor to handle attacks on his able during his debate with walter mondale. I want you to know also i will not make age an issue at this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. In the next election democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked this controversial question during his debate with Vice President george bush governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable Death Penalty for the killer . No, i dont, bernard, and i think you know i opposed the Death Penalty during all of my life. The public sees his answer as cold and dispassionate and that very night his poll numbers drop. During the 1988 Vice President ial debate, dan quayles comparison of john f. Kennedy elicited this response from his opponent senator, youre no jack kennedy. Body language pays a lot too. George w. Bush looks at his watch and he pays for it when voters see it as disrespectful. It had issues between al gore and george w. Bush as well. Gore sighs over and over again and bush, the underdog, surprises by winning the debate and, of course, the elections. Both president obama and governor romney are seasoned debaters are neither are prone to making major gaffes but if there is one thing history has taught us when it comes to president ial debates, expect the unexpected. All right. Well, ill leave it there. Weve got one more. Its not advancing now. There we go. I thought we should share a little bit from 2016 just to remind us how we got to where we are in this election today. So, this is just a little clip from one of their debates. Well let it go maybe five minutes. I want to clear up your position on because in a speech you gave to a Brazilian Bank for which you were paid 225,000, we learned from withicy leaks that you said this, and i want to quote, my dream is a hemispheric Common Market with open trade and open borders. Thank you. So, thats thats the question. Please, quiet, everybody. Is that your dream, open borders . If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about energy. You know, we trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And i do want us to have a an electric grid, an Energy System that crosses borders. I think that would be a great benefit to us. But you are very clearly quoting from wikileaks. Whats really important about wikileaks is that the russian government has engaged in espionage against americans. They have hacked american websites, american accounts of private people, of institutions, then they have given that information to wikileaks for the purposes of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest levels of the russian government. Clearly putin himself in an effort as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election. So i actually think the most important election of this evening, chris, is, finally, will donald trump admit and condemn that the russians are doing this . And make it clear that he will not have the help of putin in this election, that he rejects russian espionage against american, which he actually encouraged in the past . Those are the questions we need answered. Weve never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before. That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders. How did we get off on putin . Hold on. No. Hold on, folks, because this is going to end up getting out of control. Lets try to keep it quiet for the candidates and for the american people. Just to finish on the borders. Yeah. She wants open borders. People are going to pour into our country. People are going to come in from syria. She wants 550 more people than barack obama, and he has thousands and thousands of people that have no idea where they come from, and you see, we are going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. She wont even mention the words and neither will president obama. I just want to tell you, she wants open borders, now we can talk about putin. I dont know putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If russia and the United States got along well and went after isis, that would be good. He has no respect for her, he has no respect for our president , and ill tell you what, were in very serious trouble because we have a country with tremendous numbers of nuclear warheads. 1,800, by the way. Where they expanded and we didnt. 1,800 nuclear warheads, and shes playing chicken. Look wait from everything i see, has no respect for this person. Well, thats because hed rather have a puppet as president. No puppet, no puppet. Its pretty clear youre the puppet. You wont admit that the rush sa shans have engaged in Cyber Attacks against the United States of america. That you you encourage espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up nato, do whatever he wants to do, and that whatever he wants do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race. So i think that this is such an unprecedented situation. Weve never had a Foreign Government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. She has no idea whether its russia, china, or myself. I am not quoting myself. I am quoting 17 military and civilian agents. Yeah, i doubt. Hed rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that just absolutely she doesnt like putin because putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. Excuse me. Putin outsmarted her in syria. Shes outsmarted her every step of the way. Id like to ask you this direct question. The Top National Security officials of the country do believe russia has been behind the attack even if you dont know for sure whether they are, do you condemn any interference by russia in the American Election . By russia or anybody else. You condemn their interference . Of course i condemn. I dont know putin. I have no idea. I never met putin. I think we have a good flavor of it there. Yeah. So any way, the 2016 debates, very spirited. I dont think there was any breakout moment that really changed the race one way or the other. Its interesting to watch this, i think, four years later. All the more information thats come out about that election. But any way, anyone want to make a comment on this . I promised isaac hopefully youre online, isaac, that i would show you clips and hopefully youre happy i did. And the rest of you too. Now lets see if i can make this move again. Seems like the video all right, so, lets see. Take care of that one. Get it out of our way. All right, so at these big debates, the president ial, Vice President ial debates, one of the traditions is that they have a spin room, and this is where you see how crowded it is. This is one of the primary debates you see Amy Klobuchar there, where each campaign will have surrogates or maybe the candidate, like in this case, lined up to talk to the media and to put their spin, their take on what just happened. Is there any way to move that box . Do i need to do something . Ill just okay. So in a way, this has become, i think, sort of a joke, because its like i mean, its sort of inevitable, but whatever bad things happens, the campaign will try to put the best face on it versus if its a good debate, of course, theyll tout that. Okay. That reminds me, when klobuchar a few nights ago. I didnt remember that. Did something similar in one of the debates. Okay, how come im not advancing now . Looks weird. Im going to just do this. Weird. All right, lets see whats going on here. Here we go. All right, so. A well prepared candidate uses the debate to prepare arguments, deflect attacks, perhaps land a blow on his or her opponents. One observer of this i thought this was a great quote like soldiers armed with hand grenades, candidates march into debates with ammunition. Whatever the question being asked, theyre expected to answer with the predetermined desired response ties debaters to a set of narrowly conceived themes that have been awed eyewitne audience tested and painstakingly followed. This is from a book i read. Lets talk a little bit about debate strategy. The first strategy the campaigns deal with is whether or not to debate or how much to debate. As the campaign approaches the question of debates depends how well theyre positioned. If theyre holding a strong lead or an incumbent, its different than if an understood dog or challenger. If youre in the lead, the Main Objective is avoid mistakes. Right . Everything is going well. You just dont want to mess it up. So avoid mistakes. If youre the underdog, you then will take more risks, because what do you have to lose . Youre already losing, right . If you can maybe mix things up, get your opponent to make a mistake, you know, thats what you want to do. So i saw this up close and person personal. I got so many different stories. Ill going to use this one in 2007. When i was running for mayor of Salt Lake City, after we got through the primary with several candidates it was me versus ralph becker. Our first debate was at the institute of politics back in the old days here in this beautiful new building. And i knew that ralph was quite a bit ahead of me and that i had about two months till the election. Ralph and i had always gotten along well. We knew each other well, both served in the legislature together. He was there long after i was, but we always got along fine. So i went into this debate fairly aggressive on making attacks on him. And that continued in, you know, every debate. I remember one of them even that very first one, i went back and read one of the a utah chronicle article on it. Ralph was like, what happened, dave . I thought we got along well. I said to ralph backstage, ralph, you have to do something. Youre way ahead. I have to do something. I cant just lay down and die. Ive got to take the fight to you. But i remember ralph being kind of shocked that his friend was being so aggressive. So the other thing in this kind of strategy of whether to debate or not, is how many debates and which debates. The leading candidate might want to minimize the number of debates while the challenger may want to expand the number of debates. A couple of examples that i experience od on this. In 1982 when i was working about campaign of senator hatch, his first reelection campaign, and he was being challenged by ted wilson at the institute of politics, at the time he was the mayer yo of Salt Lake City no, i guess he was the former mayor. Anyway no, i guess he was still the mayor. Im confusing it. Youll see why. Anyway, hatch is the leader, the incumbent. Our campaign this was not my idea, but our Campaign Manager was we went through the requests for debates and picked out ten we wanted to do and we just announced, heres the debate were doing. It was kind of rude in a way, because we didnt even talk to the wilson people. We just said, well show up. He wants to go after hatch. Well just say, heres what were doing. He showed up because we had the upper hand. Now, six years later this is why i was confused on what job ted had. I was working for the governor and but wilson was our challenger but he was leading in the polls. We had the opposite strategy. We wanted to get them together as much as possible. Any different audience. Didnt care who it was. Any request that came through, if we scheduled it, we would accept it. The shoe was on the other foot. The Wilson Campaign was like, we want to be picky. But how do you, when youre challenging the governor and the governor accepted, how do you refuse to go . So that worked out okay, too. All right, debate prep. So campaigns will want to prepare their candidates with answers to the most likely questions. You do not want to send your candidate into a debate just cold, but you want to sit down and spend some time with them on little rehearsing. What are some of the likely questions youre going to get . And then maybe especially those that are going to be negative. If theres things the opponents been attacking you on or your candidate on, you want to make sure he or she can respond to those attacks. You want to know whats coming sow make sure youve got the right answers. With negative questions, the usual tactic is to pivot. We saw hillary doing that. There was a question that was negative to her, she was able to pivot to a legitimate subject of wikileakss and russian involvement where it started as a question about open borders and immigration. So she did that well. She got the subject changed. In debate prep, Campaign Research is used quite a bit. Both issues and opposition. So where you would use Opposition Research is a couple of ways. I know we havent gone into Opposition Research like we will in the future, but you would use it to know what type of attacks are coming or know what your opponent is saying. On issues you want to make sure your candidate is well informed on the issues and has answers to the questions that are going to be coming up. If the debate is televised you know, this is really important because your candidate is going to be exposed probably to more people than he or she will have seen during the whole campaign in 30 minutes or 60 minutes on television. S this a huge opportunity you want to make sure you maximize. So i guess the conclusion here is the debates can matter. We have seen that through history. You need to be prepared for them and take them very seriously. Any questions on debate strategy or what weve talked about here today . Were going to kind of im going to pivot slightly and move on a little bit to some other things. Anything from zoom . I. I actually had a quick question. Oh, yeah, please. How much of a role do you think that debate actually have in like a real numbers sense as far as getting people out to vote and actually changing peoples minds . Yeah, thats a good question. Yeah, who is that . Ryan. Oh, ryan. Thanks, ryan. It really depends. Both candidates are pretty evenly, you know pretty even as far as debate skills and theres no big surprises, no big mistakes it probably does not have much impact. Even in 2016 i have not seen that anything that those debates between trump and clinton really moved anybody. Do they motivate their supporters to go vote . Possibly. I havent seenfies that. I think the biggest thing there are two big things. One is a mistake can be very damaging and we have certainly seen that through history the things i shared and that were on the clip from cnn and Anderson Cooper in some of those president ial debates in the past, can make a difference in a negative way or positive for the other person. And the other is, it can help a candidate like with jack kennedy or with jimmy carter against president ford kind of help solidify them like, yeah, this person could be president , and sort of make people more comfortable with them. Does that help, ryan . I dont know if thats the yeah. Yeah, thanks. Kind of depends. But it can have an impact. A lot of times it doesnt have that much of an impact, but it certainly can. Okay, any other comments or questions . I just have a quick question. Do you find that debates are more finfluential and local or national . Sophie. Yeah, and who is this . Sophie. Yeah, thanks sophie. I think generally probably more influential in national because it gets more coverage. Where a local race, its pretty rare you know, even if its a statewide or congressional race where its televised at least in utah its pretty rare that you ever hear anything about it again once its over. So people watching it may have an impact bu, but its not like the president ial stage where a mistake gets amp wilified so mu it can sink their ship. But it can help. I know in the wilson debates in 1988, where bangeter was the underdog because of difficult decisions we made as governor in raising taxes, that putting them on the stage together really helped. Because well, it just really helped. The people could understand why he did what he did. The contrast, i think, was good for norm. Though ted was very capable, and hes a very fine person. But it helped. Helped our side, i think, ultimately. Okay, any other questions on that . Were heading into debate season. Heres the 2020 debates. So youll have this on canvas when i post this. President ial and Vice President ial debates coming up, starting a week from tomorrow. And then of course the vp debate right here. Very close by. President circle. And then the two more president ial debates. So i think the debates this year have the potential to be really, really important. Anyone want to give their opinion on that before i give mine . Sierra. Yeah, thanks, sierra. I just had a question. With mailin ballots going out way earlier than, like, some of these, like, later debates, like on the 15th and the 22nd and obviously theres this big push from people to turn them in immediately this year, like, do you think that, like, specifically, like, that their debate will even have much of an influence on undecided voters because so many people will have turn in the mailin ballots by then . In most of these, this walk down history lane is when there was one election day, not an election day that lasted a month or four or six weeks. Some states are doing early voting right now, right . Like i think virginia and north carolina, maybe a few other places. Clearly the undecided voters, if they still havent decided, then it could have an impact. I think youre going to see with the early voters, mostly those 80 , 90 of the voters have already decided. So it could still have an impact on the later deciders, the undecided. They may be watching for some clue or some cue of which way should they go. But i think the early voters are people who have decided. So i think it will still have an impact, but it does change the dynamic for sure. Because you could have people who vote early, theres some mistake in the debates, but they cant take their vote back. They cant take it back, i dont think. If its been accepted, if there were no mistakes, nothing to cure, they cant change their mind. Its too late by that point. Okay. Any other thoughts or comments . All right, on the state level, we also have a lot of debates coming up, so ive given you the schedule for the utah debate commission, cwhich is like the state counterpart to the national debates. So, they are going to do a number of these on television. So, it will be interesting. Im sure there will be other sbs and others that are not exactly debates but forums where one candidate speaks and they leave and the other candidate comes in and speaks. Those arent as exciting in my opinion. Now, were going to have our own debate, october 7th were going host a debate between candidates for the Salt Lake County counsel for an atlarge seat. Shahreen is the incumbent, but i appointed incumbent, so first time shes in the race. This is going to be on zoom. There will be a chance for extra credit. Some of you have seen this. Ive given them pretty strict rules on the debate, but im inviting your help. If youd like to help suggest questions to be asked. So basically well have about 22 minutes. This is already posted on canvas. Maybe you have seen this. Ill just cover it quickly. Im inviting to you submit one to five questions that could be asked. Ground rules are the question needs to be the same question for both candidates, that they each could answer. So not slanted one way or the other, but just a straight up question on issue. For every question you submit to me that follows this rule of being something that could be asked to both candidates, ill give you ten points, whether or not your question is used. Up to a maximum of 50 points or five questions. So im asking you if youre interest in the earni interested in earning a little extra credit, send me your word documents by next sunday night at 11 59, our favorite day and time. If i decide to use one of your questions ill ask you to offer them. I know weve got people working on at least one of these campaigns, so in this case, you can still earn extra credit, but i would not have you ask the question, but maybe i would ask the question if its a good question. You want to questions emailed to you . Yes, no, not on canvas. Just send me on a word document. Ill go through them next sunday and sometime before the 7th, decide which ones i think would be good. If theres one of yours id like to you ask, ill follow up with you. We may not have time to get to all of them, but i thought this would be a fun way to involve the class but also in a way that is im really very a real stickler about i want this to be totally fair to both candidates. And its funny, these days, even in the president ial debates, as we saw particularly in the exchange between hillary and trump, questions are much more personalized to a particular candidate than they used to be. Those are never debate rules i would agree to. I always felt like the question needed to be i feel like its more fair if its the same question posed to both candidates, rather than something like, theyre going give me a zinger and my opponent a cream puff. So thats the way well do it. Any questions . It will be on zoom. That way they dont have to wear masks either. That will be a plus. Even though it would be fun to be here in person. Next 20 minutes were going to start about text week chapter two on political math. So, some elections are very close, decided by relatively few votes. We know that. A couple of famous examples well, let me give you a couple of my examples, first. So in 1998 i talked about this im going to continue to, im sure. Banget bangeteres, election. Trailing in the polls by 30 . Eventually we won in a threeway race, 40 to 38 . 11,000 votes out of 60,000 votes some very close. 1991 when i first ran for Salt Lake City mayor, it was a fiveway race. In the primary, every poll had me in third or fourth place. Going into the election night, when i went to my Victory Party with my supporters, i had notes in my pocket to give a concession speech, because cl r clearly i had lost. I ended up squeaking into second place by 102 votes. So sometimes these races are very, very close. Nationally we have the famous example of bush v. Gore in 2000. Where bush carried florida by 537 votes, thus winning the electoral college, although he lost the popular vote. And then similarly, our last president ial election in 2016, trump won with a little bigger margin in the electoral college, 304 votes, but lost the popular vote, 46. 1 to 48. 2, or 63 million votes to 66 million votes. So trump won in three states who were key pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan, which really won him the election. Those were states that could have gone either way, and those three states the total margin of victory was 79,316 votes or. 053 of all votes cast, so incredibly, incredibly close. Now, theres been other examples that are mentioned in the textbook such as Senate Elections in nevada, delaware, indiana, missouri, alabama, even control of the Virginia State assembly after a tie vote and picking the name of the winner out of a hat sophomore sometimes elections are incredibly close. Virtually every Campaign Manager has been on both sides of this, both on the losing and winning side of some narrow elections. This convinces them, accord to the authors of our book, that campaigns can totally make a difference in whether theyre won or lost, because there are so many elections that are very, very close and that just excuse me just one minor change here or there could have made a difference in the outcome this. Contrasts with a number of Political Science scholars who actually the motion that elections are primarily their notion is that elections are determined more by structural underlying economic demographic and partisan fundamentals. So determined more by fundamentals of the electorate than by whatever the campaign does or doesnt do. Heres a few examples of that. Colin and brookman, they said they found in evidence the persuasive contact activates the candidates supporters to turn out. I looked at the article. This is not quoted in the texting but i share it with you. They say we present unique evidence indicating campaign persuasion is extremely rare in general elections. When party cues are absent and ballot measures in primaries or when persuasion is conducted far in advance of the general election, it appears to Campaign Contact and advertising can influence voters choices. They concluded in a general election, they dont believe campaigns make much difference. But before the general election in the primary or in an election where candidates are unknown or like a ballot measure, it could definitely have an impact. All right, well, what do you think about that . Go back. If thats true, why are we here, right . Thats what i think about it. If campaigns make no difference, we should cancel this class, call it good, but obviously we think they can matter, and thats why were here. Any comments or thoughts on that . Does that surprise anybody . I thought it was a little surprising. Well, okay. So, the reason this scholarry skepticism, but the Campaign Managers surveyed for this book do not suggest that campaigns effects are large, and none seem to believe theres big pools of moderate undecided voters and agree the fundamentals rightly matter but also leave ample room for marginal effects of turnout or persuasion. This is what were focused on, not that theres 50 not in a general election 50 ps of the voters that can two either way. Its usually 5 or 10 that can go either way, that the campaign is really focused on, as well as not losing the support they already have. So here are some questions to consider are those who say fundamentals matter most, campaigns hardly register on their results correct . Are those that say mobilization is most vital correct . What about those who say persuasion is the most important factor . Do campaigns matter . If they matter, do they matter by mobilizing their partisan voters or by persuading swing voters . Any thoughts on these questions . While i get a drink of water . I have an opinion on this. Yeah. Give us your name, please. Its ryan. Oh, hi, ryan. So this is just my thinking. Again, i have not done a study. But i feel like a bad campaign can hurt more than a Good Campaign can help, and i feel like part of Campaign Strategy is just avoid the really bad things. Because a bad campaign can definitely derail a candidate, but i dont know if a Good Campaign can win in a place where they otherwise would be able to. Thats interesting. Okay. I could see that. I think it could be both, but yeah, i think its an interesting point you make. Thanks nor shafor sharing that. Other thoughts or comments on this controversy of whether campaigns matter or not . Charlie, please. I actually disagree with that point. I actually think a Good Campaign can make a huge difference. You can look at races historically, and there are some races that have been in red or blue areas thought the entire country that with a Good Campaign, Campaign Manager or candidate can sway that seat, incumbents being removed and sometimes even in a same party. There was one in new york that was a really long time incumbent loss to somebody. Or was it new york or new jersey . I dont remember, exactly. I its a democrat. Or was it a republican . I dont remember. Theres been owe lot of examples where campaigns made huge differences in the positive, so i would actually very much disagree with that point. I think you could both be right. Im not just trying to be political here. I think a Good Campaign can make a difference. I think a bad campaign can make a difference, and theres probably other campaigns where they dont make much difference. If the fundamentals are so strong, theres really no way to overcome them. So i think its kind of all over the place. All right, so the point i want to get across here from the book is that Many Political scientists do argue that the fundamentals, such as the economy, the incumbents approval ratingsing the composition of the district or electorate are decisions the not the Campaign Managers make. We kind of talked about this. I think they have a point, but i dont think you can say it makes no difference. Okay . Anyone disagree with that . All right. So ill give you a number of examples. I dont think well take the time to go through each of these, but you can see examples where the scholars raised concerns or at least skepticism that campaigns make as much people in the Campaign Business might assume. I thought i saw a hand. So this kind of scholarly doubt is rooted in several assumptions. All of these fundamentals, they could make a big difference and that no amount of Campaign Spending or brilliant strategy can change nothose fundamentals. And also that scholars argue that even if campaigns had the potential to change entrenched minds, there would need to be measurable differences in the impact of the competing campaigns. What theyre saying is campai campaigns, okay, but they kind of negate each other. One person runs an ad, another person runs an ad. A lot of times the spending is fairly even. Even enough of what makes a difference, so theyre skeptical that this makes much of a difference. They point out much is on president ial campaigns where theyre likely to matter the most and campaigns are likely to matter the least. May be true more president ial campaigns than most of the campaigns in america, because we know theres thousands of nonpresident ial campaigns and elections, whether for congress, legislature, governor, city and county elected officials and so forth. One Campaign Manager stated, maybe the notion that campaigns have little effect has some validity on the president ial level, but on the state and local levels i think campaigns make all the difference some downballot races as theyre sometimes called are more susceptible to campaigns effects than high profile races because the quality of the campaigns vary more widely at the local level sophomore not always as even a Playing Field as you get down into the smaller races. So, theres a couple of arguments that talk about that, that basically as you go down the ballot its less true, but president ial it may be somewhat true. So lets just throw it out what do you think about the idea of the scholarly skepticism versus the arguments that no, campaigns can make a difference . If you had a make a choice, which side would you be on . Or somewhere in the middle . Yes. [ inaudible ]. Yeah. At the local level, especially because they know the people, know what they can do so, maybe they can influence change [ inaudible ]. Yeah, okay. And maybe where its less partisan, too, right, could have a bigger impact. Okay, thanks. Anna, right . No. Whats your name . Abbie. Abbie. I had the first letter right. Okay, abbie, thanks. Yeah. Other thoughts on this . I guess my main point would be we are here for a reason campaigns can make a difference but its also good to sort of temper that, because one thing i think is also very true is that those who are campaign consultants, maybe professional Campaign Managers, they may overstate what good they can do for a candidate. Right . They may oversell. Like we could take anybody and make them president . You know, we can well, theres a lot of other factors, and certainly the fundamentals. The partisan nhe electorate, where they line up on the partisan basis, whats going on in the economy. Theres a lot of other things going on that also matter. But certainly on the margin many elections are decided on the margin. Many elections are won way less than 10 or less than 5 of the vote, and thats where campaigns really can make a difference. Okay, thanks, everybody. Well see you one way or the other on wednesday. Get ready for all these debates coming up. Oh, my goodness. Its like my favorite time of the decade. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. 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