Anyone tuned into the presidential race may have noticed the Republican and Democratic campaign events from last weekend on a temporary hiatus due to the candidates prepping for the upcoming presidential debates.
Although the presidential debates seems to serve as a last chance to appeal to undecided voters, a handful of recent reports by The Daily Beast and Gallup have suggested that the presidential debates aren’t as important as they appear to be.
Both reports argue that very rarely in the past 40 years have the debates produced a major change in polling or actual votes. The studies found that a major reason is because often a large majority of the viewing audience has already made up their mind on which candidate they are voting for.
For Fairfield students who haven’t been able to keep with the presidential race, the debates serve as an important tool in deciding whom they will be voting for come the November election.
“The presidential race is so long. Everything these candidates are going to say in the debates has already been reiterated hundreds of times,” said Sam Tooley ’15. “[The debates] will be good for me though because I really haven’t been paying close attention.”
Recently in the polls, Mitt Romney has been losing ground in nearly every battleground state, as well as the popular vote.
It’s looking more and more apparent that Romney needs these debates in order to have a shot at winning in November.
Justin Wimer ‘14 says, “Romney’s constant attacking of President Obama clearly hasn’t been working the way he had hoped. What he needs to do is dish out the specifics on his agenda so voters have an idea of what his policies will look like if he’s elected. No one wants to elect a man who says he’ll lower the national debt and then doesn’t give the details of his plan for doing so.”
The American public hasn’t been won over by President Obama either, which was indicated by his economic approval numbers only just recently reaching 50 percent in last week’s Gallup poll. This makes his performance on Domestic Policy issues critical as he is walking a very thin line in regards to public support.
Both candidates could use the three presidential debates to their advantage. Romney could possibly gain back the ground he’s lost in September while Obama can widen his very slim lead in many key states going into November.
Leave a Reply