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Debates that Mattered: Voters' Reaction to the 1984 Canadian Leadership Debates*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

David J. Lanoue
David J. Lanoue
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Abstract

Students of political debating in both Canada and the United States have generally concluded that national debates do little more than reinforce viewers' prior preferences. This article considers the Canadian leadership debates of 1984, and asks two major questions. First, would the presence of relatively unknown party leaders make these debates more influential than expected? Second, would the French-language debate have special effects on francophone Canadians? The author finds that the debates, unlike their 1979 counterpart, had a significant effect on voting behaviour. Moreover, that effect was especially strong among people for whom French was the first language, and worked in favour of the candidate most fluent in that language. The author concludes by considering the importance of these findings.

Résumé

Les études faites sur les débats politiques au Canada et aux États-Unis sont généralement arrivées à la conclusion que les débats nationaux ne font guère que renforcer les préférences déjà établies des spectateurs. Cet article examine les débats entre les chefs des partis politiques canadiens en mettant l'accent sur deux questions majeures. Premièrement, est-ce que la pràsence de chefs de partis relativement peu connus exerce sur ces débats une influence plus grande que celle à laquelle on pouvait s'attendre? Deuxièmement, est-ce que le débat en langue française a des effets particuliers sur les Canadiens français? Nous trouvons que les débats, contrairement à ceux de 1979, ont eu un effet significatif sur le vote. En plus, l'effet a été particulièrement important parmi les Canadiens français et a joué en faveur du candidat maîtrisant le mieux cette langue. Nous concluons que ces résultats sont importants et doivent être pris en compte.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 51 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1991

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References

1 See, for example, Hagner, Paul R. and Rieselbach, Leroy N., “The Impact of the 1976 Presidential Debates: Conversion or Reinforcement?” in Bishop, George F., Meadow, Robert G. and Jackson-Beeck, Marilyn, eds., The Presidential Debates (New York: Praeger, 1978), 157–158Google Scholar; Sigelman, Lee and Sigelman, Carol K., “Judgments of the Carter-Reagan Debate: The Eyes of the Beholders,” Public Opinion Quarterly 48 (1984), 624–628CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sears, David O. and Chaffee, Steven H., “Uses and Effects of the 1976 Debates: An Overview of Empirical Studies,” in Kraus, Sidney, ed., The Great Debates: Carter vs. Ford, 1976 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 223–261Google Scholar; and LeDuc, Lawrence and Price, Richard, “Great Debates: The Televised Leadership Debates in Canada,” this Journal 18 (1985), 135–153Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Bitzer, Lloyd and Rueter, Theodore, Carter vs. Ford: The Counterfeit Debates of 1976 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

3 Kraus, Sidney, Televised Presidential Debates and Public Policy (Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 1988), 5Google Scholar.

4 For a good account of the major criticisms of media coverage of American debates, see Kraus, Televised Presidential Debates, chap. 4.

5 See, for example, Lubell, Samuel, “Personalities vs. Issues,” in Kraus, , ed., The Great Debates, 151–162Google Scholar; Lanoue, David J. and Schrott, Peter R., “Voters' Reactions to Televised Presidential Debates: Measurement of the Source arid Magnitude of Opinion Change,” Political Psychology 10 (1989), 275–285CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lanoue, David J. and Schrott, Peter R., “The Effects of Primary Season Debates on Public Opinion,” Political Behavior 11 (1989), 289–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 LeDuc and Price, “Great Debates,” 138.

7 Ibid.

8 For a discussion on cognitive consistency theory, see Barner-Barry, Carol and Rosenwein, Robert, Psychological Perspectives on Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1985), chap. 6Google Scholar.

9 LeDuc and Price, “Great Debates,” 137.

10 Goar, Carol, “The Race for Sussex Drive,” Maclean's, 07 23, 1984, 7Google Scholar.

11 Fletcher, Frederick J., “The Media and the 1984 Landslide,” in Penniman, Howard, ed., Canada at the Polls, 1984: A Study of the Federal General Elections (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), 181Google Scholar.

12 Kay, Barry J., Brown, Steven D., Curtis, James E., Lambert, Ronald D. and Wilson, John M., “The Character of Electoral Change: A Preliminary Report from the 1984 National Election Study,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Montreal, 1985Google Scholar.

13 Barr, Cathy Widdis, “Televised Campaign Debates: Their Impact on Voting Behaviour and Their Contribution to an Informed Electorate,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Quebec City, 1989, 9Google Scholar.

14 LeDuc, Lawrence and Price, Richard, “Campaign Debates and Party Leader Images: The ‘Encounter '88’ Case,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Victoria, 1990Google Scholar.

15 Fletcher, “The Media and the 1984 Landslide,” 182.

16 Writing about the 1988 debates elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, Monière, in a lexicographic study of the leaders' performances, notes that his language skills gave Mulroney an advantage while Broadbent and, to a lesser extent, Turner were relatively disadvantaged. See Monière, Denis, “Analyse lexicographique du débat des chefs en franços dans l'élection fédérate canadienne de 1988,” this Journal 24(1991), 29–50Google Scholar.

17 The effects of the media over debate evaluations may have been greatest in Quebec, according to one analysis of the media in 1984. See Wagenberg, R. H., Soderlund, W. C., Romanow, W. I. and Briggs, E. D., “Campaigns, Images and Polls: Mass Media Coverage of the 1984 Canadian Election,” this Journal 21 (1988), 117–129Google Scholar.

18 In order to be certain that debate watching was not simply a surrogate for general political interest, the analyses below were run while controlling for interest. The results did not differ substantively from those reported in the tables presented here.

19 The calculation of likelihoods here is based on the fact that unstandardized probit coefficients approximate Z scores, which in turn may be used to assess probabilities. For the purposes of computation, we assume a 40-year old male, college-educated anglophone respondent with an annual income of about $35,000. Changing these assumptions has comparatively little impact on the probabilities stated above. For example, if we specify a 25-year old female, high school-educated francophone making about $25,000 per year, we find that the likelihood of a Liberal voting for her party drops by about 9 per cent as a result of watching the debate (the figure for our previous specification was just below 10 per cent). For further information on probit analysis, see Aldrich, John H. and Nelson, F. D., Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit Models (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Because of the inclusion of the party identification variables, the explanatory power of each model is quite high. Thus, these figures are irrelevant to our specific discussion of debate effects, and might prove misleading if reported.

20 Hay, John, “The Battle of the Image Men,” Maclean's, 08 6, 1984, 13Google Scholar.

21 Miller, Robert, “The Mulroney Era,” Maclean's, 09 17, 1984, 10Google Scholar, and Wilson-Smith, Anthony, “The Tory Dawn in Quebec,” Maclean's, 09 17, 1984, 26Google Scholar.

22 Of the 3,377 respondents in the National Election Study, the following breakdown is reported: 12 per cent of anglophones and 48 per cent of francophones watched the French-language debate; 58 per cent of anglophones and 24 per cent of francophones watched the English-language debate.

23 For the calculation of probabilities, the same specifications are used here as are employed in the nation-wide data reported in Table 2, except the language is not used.

24 Geer, John G., “The Effects of Presidential Debates on the Electorate's Preference for Candidates,” American Politics Quarterly 16 (1988), 486–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See, for example, Lang, Kurt and Lang, Gladys Engel, “Reactions of Viewers,” in Kraus, , ed., The Great Debates, 313–330Google Scholar, and Simons, Herbert W. and Leibowitz, Kenneth, “Shifts in Candidate Images,” in Kraus, , ed., The Great Debates: Carter vs. Ford, 1976, 398–404Google Scholar.

26 When respondents were asked what they “learned” from the televised debates, only 54 (out of 3,377) named specific issue positions as their first response (18 more said they learned about the candidates' “stands on the issues,” and another 13 said they learned “where they stood on women's rights”). By contrast, the most common responses (with 10 or more voters naming each) were: learning that Turner was a “poor speaker,” was “incompetent,” “nervous,” “rattled,” “poorly prepared” and “disappointing”; learning that Mulroney and Broadbent were “good speakers”; learning what Mulroney “is really like”; and discovering generally the leaders' “personalities” and “how they stood up to pressure.”

27 Edwards, George C. III and Wayne, Stephen J., Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy Making (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 74–75Google Scholar.

28 Lanoue and Schrott, “The Effects of Primary Season Debates.”

29 LeDuc and Price, “Campaign Debates and Party Leader Images.”