How did the public judge debating success?

One of the peculiarities of Thursday night’s leaders’ debate – rather like the scoring of any discussion – was the different way that performances were interpreted.

As the stats below from the BBC website show a number of major media outlets took a snap poll after the debate on how each of the candidates had fared. What is most striking is the complete contrast in attitudes that (presumably) ordinary members of the public showed after watching the same event, although Tom Harris has an interesting analysis based on whether people watched or listened to the debate.

Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats is quite clearly the winner in the public perception stakes, however Gordon Brown and David Cameron attract wildly varying ratings. ITV and The Sun have Brown coming third, and by some distance, whereas Channel 4 and Sky News place Cameron in this slot. How can this be?

Assuming that the people being polled were a genuinely random sample and not party supporters it seems strange that there can be such a variance in how people viewed each of the speakers. This may be linked to the debate which often takes place on the extent to which the media affects the outcome of elections in the UK.

One of the logical conclusions could be that the interpretation of how people did in the debate is based in part on previously held views and biases; thus if someone is more predisposed to Cameron they will score him higher and so on. The question is if it was the media that created this perception.

Alternatively if it’s not based on a conscious previously held view it could be down to how viewers or readers of these particular media outlets have been influenced in recent times. For instance The Sun’s decision to switch its support from Labour could explain Brown’s low scoring in their poll.

The flipside of this particular argument is of course whether the media influences its readers, or whether people choose their media outlet based on their own views e.g. in Scotland, a Labour supporter may explicitly choose to read the Daily Record because it supports that party.

However given that some of these ratings were based on what ITV, Sky and Channel 4 viewers thought this raises another question and perhaps highlights one of the myths of media political coverage in the UK; that newspapers can show bias but that broadcasters are presented from doing so.

Whilst broadcasters cannot take sides in the same way their print colleagues can there are obviously other ways to do this, even simply in terms of the stories that they choose to cover. Thus again people who watch these news outlets may already have had their perceptions of likely success influenced by their regular political updates.

If these influences are all relevant then it does again undermine the notion that these debates are themselves especially crucial to the election’s outcome. So as we move towards the next two debates – which will be on Sky and BBC – it will be interesting to again note the extent to which members of the public can so differently interpret the same information and events.