Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Do people really decide who to vote for AFTER they see the debates

A lot of people have been discussing whether or not people make up their mind about who to vote for after they watch the presidential debates. Some commentators say that the debates are a crucial factor in helping swing voters make up their mind, while other commentators think that the vast majority of people have already decided whom to vote for and the debates only serve to confirm their existing opinions.

I tend to agree with the later opinion. Most of the people I know are Clinton supporters and their consensus was that Clinton was the clear winner of the first debate. As a Clinton supporter, I was glad to hear this. However, my good humour was burst when I spoke with the few Trump supporters that I know and I realised that they were equally convinced that Trump had won the debate.

I was amused to read that Jimmy Kimmel ran an interesting experiment to test this phenomenon. He went out on the streets to ask random passers by how they felt the two candidates had performed on the first presidential debate. This is a pretty normal thing to do - the twist was the fact that he conducted the interviews several hours before the debate happened. I wasn't surprised that most of the interviewees had a strong opinions about who had won the debate. It is well worth checking out this episode of the Jimmy Kimmel show.