Do Republicans Beat Democrats in TV Debates? Here's What Polls Suggest

In less than a week, voters across the United States will head to the polls for crunch midterm elections, with the Republicans hoping to seize control of both the Senate and House of Representatives. State governorships, and lower-level state positions, are also up for grabs.

Ahead of the elections some candidates have clashed with their rivals in often heated televised debates.

On October 25 John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Democratic and Republican Senate candidates for Pennsylvania respectively, met for a highly-anticipated debate in Harrisburg.

Newsweek has analyzed polling, and spoken to political experts, in a bid to determine how much of an impact debates are likely to have on election outcomes.

What the Polling Shows

To keep the sample size manageable, Newsweek has focused on Senate debates for seven of the most fiercely contested states. These televised contests took place in Arizona on October 6, North Carolina on October 7, Wisconsin on October 7, Ohio on October 10, Georgia on October 14, and both Florida and New Hampshire on October 18.

For each debate, aggregate polling data, compiled by election analysis site Real Clear Politics, has been compared for both the day of the debate and October 24. Newsweek has also compared polls, from the same pollster, for both before and after each debate.

According to Real Clear Politics data there was a swing towards the Republicans after six of the seven debates, though it is unclear whether this was caused by the televised events, or other factors, such as news events or a broader change in sentiment.

Between the date of the debate, and October 24, GOP candidates recorded swings of 4 percent in Arizona, 3.1 percent in North Carolina, 0.6 percent in Ohio, 2 percent in Georgia, 0.7 percent in Florida and 1.8 percent in New Hampshire. Wisconsin was the only state to record a post-debate swing to the Democratic candidate, with Mandela Barnes gaining by 0.3 percent against the GOP's Ron Johnson.

Individual pollsters produced similar results. In Arizona, the closest polls to the October 6 debate from the same pollster were conducted by FOX 10/InsiderAdvantage, on September 6-7 and October 11. Over this time there was a two percent swing towards Blake Masters, the Republican candidate. Trafalgar Group polling for North Carolina took place on October 16-19 and September 1-4, with the October 7 debate in the middle. It recorded a 1 percent gain by the GOP's Ted Budd between the two dates.

However, while post-debate swings towards the Republicans were recorded in six of the seven races, it is unclear whether this was caused directly by the debates or by other factors.

What Experts Think

Speaking to Newsweek, a number of scholars suggested the impact of TV debates on congressional elections is likely to be limited, due to low viewing figures.

Professor Donald P. Green, a U.S. politics specialist at Columbia University, said: "Public opinion scholars have long expressed doubt that congressional debates have appreciable effects on election outcomes, since audiences tend to be small and contain few swayable voters. To the extent that debates have an impact, the channel would be through media coverage that "spins" the debate as a victory for one candidate."

Professor Marianne Stewart, from the University of Texas at Dallas, shared a similar sentiment, telling Newsweek: "Once we get below the presidential debate level, it is not clear how many people watch/hear them [debates]."

She also suggested debates could be more likely to reinforce existing opinions, rather than form new ones, stating: "Whether debates persuade people's voting decisions or reinforce already made decisions is the big question and, in a polarized era including the 2022 congressional mid-terms and some state elections, reinforcement is more likely than persuasion among party identifiers."

Thomas Gray, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas, told Newsweek there is a lack of research on the impact of debates at the sub-national level.

He commented: "Almost all research on campaign debates has been about Presidential debates. There is not much to go on about Congressional debates. But, extrapolating from what we have learned about Presidential debates, the best assessment is that debates rarely have a decisive impact on elections and their effects can be difficult to predict.

"This is for several reasons, the foremost of which is that not that many people watch the debates. In fact, more people will see highlights or coverage describing the debate than will actually watch the debate itself. This coincides with another thing we have learned: the coverage and description of the debate (by journalists, popular social media accounts, and people's own social networks) can matter as much or more than what happened in the debate. Someone may do relatively well for 58 minutes but have one rough two-minute answer that gets a lot of coverage and undermines anything they gained."

According to Professor Gregory Wawro, who teaches U.S. politics at Columbia University, the impact of debates is very hard to assess based on existing evidence.

He told Newsweek: "Applying today's standard of social scientific inquiry, it is extremely difficult to say what the impact of debates is...There are so many factors at play that it is impossible to convincingly isolate the causal effect of debates."