“THESE are pathetic, feeble excuses!” roared Ed Miliband, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, across the floor of the House of Commons. Less than two months before a general election, Britain’s parties and broadcasters continue to squabble over the format of a proposed series of televised debates. Mr Miliband wants a head-to-head against the prime minister, David Cameron. Mr Cameron, wary of a risky duel, says he will take part only in a seven-way debate with the leaders of all the main British parties represented in Parliament.
Before the television age, bringing debates to a large audience was a slog. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln and his rival in Illinois for a seat in America’s Senate staged seven three-hour debates over two months across the state. Widely attended and reported, they raised Lincoln’s profile nationally, paving the way for his presidential victory two years later. Nowadays televised debates between candidates for the top job are a democratic rite of passage. South Africa’s first free election in 1994 was preceded by a debate between Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk. Last year Afghanistan and Indonesia held their first debates. Sometimes, voters even get debates without full democracy: Mexico’s ruling party consented to a televised showdown in 1994, well before it stopped rigging elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s flubbed performance in Iran’s first debate in 2009 cost him votes—not that he paid attention.
Incumbents may tremble and viewers yawn, but televised debates are becoming a near-universal feature of democracy. How should they be organised, and what impact do they have? The first fight is over who calls the shots. Some are run by the state: in France, which has held them since 1974, they are arranged by a Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel. More often, broadcasters hammer out a format with the parties. After America’s first debates in 1960, between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Democrats and Republicans did not agree to hold another until 1976. For the next dozen years they were organised by the League of Women Voters, which eventually tired of the parties’ attempts to turn them into “campaign-trail charades devoid of substance” and handed them to a commission run by Democrats and Republicans—to the irritation of small parties, which call it a stitch-up.
Next, who should be invited? Some electoral systems narrow the field: in France, a single debate is held between the two presidential candidates who get into the second round. Swedish viewers, by contrast, are taxed by a proportional voting system and rules requiring the inclusion of all parties represented in parliament. Last year that meant an eight-way debate. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parties send members to the parliament in Westminster and clamour for a place on air, despite not fielding candidates in most of the country. Sometimes judges decide: in 2013 Kenya’s high court ruled at the last minute that two more candidates should be allowed to take part, taking the total to eight and dragging out the programme to three hours.
America’s panel requires presidential candidates to reach 15% in the polls to take part. The rule has been challenged in court by the Green and Libertarian parties, whose candidates were arrested after protesting outside a TV studio in 2004. In 2010 a group of academics recommended cutting the threshold to 5%, the share needed to receive campaign funding, in order to wake up the four out of ten voters who currently don’t bother to cast a ballot for anyone.
But more inclusive rules can send viewers to sleep. Germany used to run round-table discussions, featuring all parties. But they proved deathly dull. Ratings fell from 84% of eligible voters in 1972 to barely half by the late 1980s. Since 2002, it has used a jazzier format. Das TV-Duell sees the top two candidates battle it out, prodded by a panel of presenters that most recently included a comedian better known for his performance in the Eurovision Song Contest. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, hold one debate for the main contenders and another for the minnows.
Little note, nor long remember?
The scramble to take part can sometimes seem pointless. In 2010 Australia’s prime ministerial debate was brought forward by an hour to avoid clashing with another nail-biter: the final of “MasterChef”, a cookery competition. The following year a debate between party leaders in Canada was moved because of an ice-hockey match. Political scientists are sceptical about the extent to which debates swing elections. A study of nearly 2,000 opinion polls in American presidential races between 1952 and 2008 by Robert Erikson of Columbia University and Christopher Wlezien, now at the University of Texas, found that preferences usually shift only slightly in the final six months. Even the worst on-air performances seemed to have little impact on the polls: Gerald Ford’s batty claim in 1976 that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” failed to halt a slide by Jimmy Carter (though Mr Carter still won).
But as two-horse races between well-known candidates, America’s presidential elections offer a poor guide to the potential influence of debates. When outsiders have a chance, TV exposure can make a difference. Jesse Ventura, a former wrestler, went from also-ran to eventual winner of the Minnesota governor’s race in 1998, following a widely watched debate. Britain’s first televised contest between party leaders, in 2010, gave the third-placed Liberal Democrats a big boost in the polls (though most of that had dissipated by election day). Sweden’s debates often catapult an outsider to prominence. Last year’s beneficiary was Annie Loof, a young MP who was shooed away live on air by the eventual winner when she tried to hand him a paper on energy. Little-known candidates usually stand to gain most from the “unmediated exposure” of a live debate, says John Curtice, a polling expert at the University of Strathclyde.
Even when they skip the broadcasts themselves, voters pay attention to the commentary these generate. “They tend to dominate the discourse, even if they don’t have high ratings,” says Peter Esaiasson of Gothenburg University. In one experiment, a group of Americans was shown the 2004 debate between John Kerry and George Bush. Some were then shown commentary from CNN saying that Mr Kerry had won the argument. Others watched NBC News, which gave the edge to Mr Bush. By wide margins, the voters agreed with the broadcaster they had listened to. Australia’s and New Zealand’s debates are accompanied by an on-screen, real-time tracker of viewers’ opinions. The “worm”, as the rising and falling line is known, is credited with affecting the result of New Zealand’s 2002 election, after it appeared especially perky whenever the candidate of one small party spoke.
Mr Cameron is not alone among incumbents in his reluctance to risk his advantage by taking to the podium. In 1980 Mr Carter rejected a debate with Ronald Reagan and John Anderson, an independent candidate, but was later forced to agree to one (this time minus Mr Anderson) after criticism of his cop-out. But sometimes staying away seems to do no harm. On March 17th Binyamin Netanyahu won a fourth term as Israel’s prime minister, beating Yitzhak Herzog of the Zionist Union. At a televised debate last month, neither man had bothered to show up.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Lights, camera, election"