How much do presidential debates matter to voters as news consumption habits change?

Thursday night's presidential debate was unprecedented and unusual — no live audience, cutting candidate mics mid-sentence and taking place months earlier than any previous debates. And for the first time, a sitting president squared off with a former commander-in-chief.

But amidst all the attention, do Americans still think presidential debates are important? And do they truly affect elections?

Dan Myers, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities who studies political psychology and communication, joined Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to share his insight.

In a live side-by-side candidate comparison, what did voters learn?

They got to see two candidates who they may not have seen firsthand in kind of an unscripted environment for potentially a very long time… I think that generally, what we see when we look at debates is it doesn't change a whole lot of people's minds. But it does give voters an opportunity to get reacquainted with the candidate that they might be leaning towards, and it tends to sort of reinforce those existing preferences.

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By CNN’s design, the moderators were more question-askers last night and didn’t fact-check either candidate. As a political science professor, what is the proper role of moderators in a debate?

I don't really remember, at least in my, lifetime, anyone who's thought to have done a really good job moderating a presidential debate, and so I think the first thing to say is it's a really difficult job.

The presidential debates are not debates in the way that we might think about them. If we say, did high school debate, there are opportunities for the candidates to get talk about their message but also to let the other candidate respond. And also, in some cases, to have the moderator push back on that. I think the moderators last night leaned pretty heavily towards… not getting in the way of the candidate saying the message the way that they wanted to say it, or were able to say it. And that was by design.

Jake Tapper,Dana Bash — CNN anchors Jake Tapper, left, and Dana Bash, right, speaking to members of the audience before the start of the CNN Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 10, 2024.
Andrew Harnik | AP

I think there's definitely pros to that. You sort of got to hear what the candidates wanted to say and how they wanted to say it, or how they were again, able to say it in an unscripted manner. The downsides were definitely that the candidates got off track. There were a lot of questions out there that were not answered… And there were quite a few, just flat-out lies that were on stage, mostly coming from Trump. Most of that went unchallenged by the moderators, but also by the other candidate.

Younger voters aren’t watching TV news as much as previous generations. Social media has become kind of an echo chamber or a place where myths and disinformation spread like wildfire. Do you think people's changing media consumption habits change how debates are conducted or even needed in the future?

My just kind of gut-level expectation would be that you would see these debates, you know, like the nightly news programs or like, newspapers become less important over time. To some degree, though we see a little bit of the opposite of that.

Over the last 20 years, the ratings for debates have stayed pretty steady or even gone up a little bit. And so I think that that speaks to something that they offer the most opportunities in the presidential campaign don't. That's really the only chance to see the candidates side by side, having to engage in an unscripted manner.

What about the youngest of voters?

I'm thinking about students in my Intro to American Politics class who are 18 or maybe 17. They consume media a lot more through social media, through TikTok than even people who are five or 10 years older than them… I don't think we have a good handle on how debates get refracted through that environment.

My expectation would be that for the most part, people would see sort of the clips that reinforce whatever their existing media environment is telling them. So if you're if you're in a media environment with a lot of Republicans, you're going to see lots of clips of Joe Biden stumbling or pausing for long points of time. If you're going in a media environment dominated by Democrats, then you're going to see a lot of clips of Donald Trump saying things and being fact-checked.