Comments on: Did the UK General Election Debates Make a Difference?

By: Mimar

Mimar — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:21:14 +0000

Matt, the gap between political insiders and citizens always comes across strongly (particularly among left-leaning voters, in fact), as many citizens feel that politicians “are just in it for themselves” and don’t have any interest in improving the lives of ordinary people. I found myself wondering what the outcome would be if I asked the exact same questions of voters today, in the wake of the new government with Nick Clegg as David Cameron’s lieutenant…

By: Konya

Konya — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:12:14 +0000

Here in Australia we have had televised debates for quite a few years, the impact of them is pretty debatable with many commentators saying that their effects are negligible. If anything the opposition is the one side to get the most out of it as they get a platform on prime-time TV to convey their key messages.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Sun, 30 May 2010 07:46:43 +0000

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:55:22 +0000

It raises fascinating questions, doesn’t it, about how people’s votes can be so strategic, rather than simply votes for who they like most. It also shows how important it might be in a parliamentary system to get the parties (not simply party, singular) that one wants into power. In Canada for a long while, I knew many people in British Columbia who didn’t like the Reform Party but who couldn’t stand the idea of the official opposition being the Bloc Quebecois; one goes to the polls later than the rest of the country in BC, so many people I know voted with a sense that Eastern Canada had already decided things, and that BC might at least decide the official opposition … which led them to vote for a party they found odious, but less odious than the Bloc, rather than for the Liberals who they preferred more but who they didn’t think needed their support!

By: Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:03:35 +0000

Good points, Matt and Jonathan!

Jonathan, the limits of Lib Dem support was also a theme in our interviews — or, in fact, the idea that people were impressed and excited by the Lib Dem performance in the elections but that they, personally, were going to stick to the same party they’d always voted for — they were just hoping and expecting that ***other*** people would support the Lib Dems.

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:51:33 +0000

I wonder whether the debates would have had more effect if they were closer to the election. As Matt notes, all the LibDem hoopla and hopes seemed to subside quickly in a week or so, leading Andrew Sullivan to note at his blog, for instance, that if the “shy tory” was a problem for polls of the past, this year’s problem was the “loud but flaky LibDem”

By: Matt Hills

Matt Hills — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:46:29 +0000

What I found interesting was the fact that the debates had so *little* apparent impact on eventual voting behaviours — the ‘Cleggmania’ surge in opinion polls seemingly being vastly unreflected in final share of the vote for the Lib-Dems. I can see how fluctuations in opinion polls serve the media’s interests, enabling a narrative of ‘media influence’ to be constructed post-debate and after specific rolling-news coverage.

And, of course, the exit poll on the night of the election was roundly dismissed, precisely because it was so far out of alignment with prior opinion polls.

However, what the debates dramatise, for me, is a potential gulf between media/spin narratives, and the voting public. I agree that engaging voters in a sense of excitement — an electoral affect — is significant, but doesn’t it remain equally notable that media fuss over worms, Cleggmania, TV debates and bigotgate all seemingly mattered very little to voters in the end? Mediated ‘narratives’ of the election appear to run into a different, obstructive type of affect rooted in the life-world: one of generational and biographical voting ‘identity’?

Also, while the voting system is tipping ever further towards illegitimacy — stacked undemocratically in favour of the Labour party — to what extent can we view TV debates and their like as a ‘presidential’-style distraction from the creaking system buried beneath ever more media glitz, glitter, and gaffes?