Preaching to the Choir? Presidential Debates and Patterns of Persuasion in a Multiparty Presidential System

Abstract

Abstract How does institutional context condition debates’ effects on vote choice during electoral campaigns? The literature on the United States suggests that debates’ effects on vote choice are minimal at best, reinforcing voters’ prior convictions more often than converting or activating them. There have been very few tests of debates’ effects in newer democracies, however, and the strong partisan identification among American voters might mean that this lack of impact is specific to the American context. In this article, the effects of presidential debates are tested in a younger democracy with a multiparty system and runoff presidential elections: Brazil. Data come from the Brazilian Electoral Panel Study, a seven-wave panel study conducted before, during, and after the 2014 Brazilian election. To rigorously measure presidential debates’ effect on voters’ likelihood to change candidates, a difference-in-differences regression was estimated with a generalized least squares (GLS) random-effects model. In the end, debates had a significant effect on vote choice in the first round of the 2014 Brazilian presidential election, as respondents who watched first-round debates were more likely to switch candidates after the debates had taken place than those who had not watched the debates. In the second round, however, when the field had been reduced to only two candidates, debates no longer affected voters’ propensity to change candidates.