The Election and the All-Important "Daily Show" Demographic

Bill O'Reily summed it up well when he hosted Jon Stewart on his cable news show, The O'Reilly Factor. "You know what's really frightening?" O'Reilly asked Stewart. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election."

O'Reilly is right. Traditionally speaking, presidential debates have been the highlights of long presidential races. Viewers got a chance to see the candidates unscripted and alone, thinking on their feet, responding to pressure, and for once becoming human. Today, though, presidential debates are just another choreographed event, the motions gone through almost by rote.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Steven Pimpare agrees with the assessment that debates have become too, well, formatted. "In today's political world debates are not actual debates, but carefully controlled environments stage-managed by the Republican and Democratic parties, who collude to shield their standard-bearers from uncomfortable questions and real, substantive engagement and confrontation," said Dr. Pimpare. "These are theatrical events more than serious political discourse, I would argue. And few voters have been persuaded by them in the past. Good for voters, I say."

Throughout America, college students have tuned out, echoing the idea that the debates are primarily a way of swaying people who don't care about the issues, but are impressed by fancy rhetoric. For many younger voters, the debates are not even worth watching, and those who watched did so with only mild interest.

Yeshiva University students appear to be no different. According to Adam Mermelstein, YC '07, "the debates are just a waste of time. They never say anything new, and they just drill in their catchphrases over and over." Even among those who did watch the debate, the political relevance is dead. Mikey Lev, YC '07, said he "watched out of curiosity. I'd still vote for Bush, even if Kerry won." Another, Ephraim Teppler, YC '07, turned it off halfway through. "They weren't debating issues," he said. "It was more like two campaign speeches being delivered side by side." Marc Kolb, host of the popular WYUR Monday night radio show "Fun with Thumbtacks," saw the debates as cute entertainment, not a chance to get to know the men who may lead the country. He referred to them on the air as "Bush and Kerry do standup."

Professor Joseph E. Luders, David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in Political Science at Stern College for Women, acknowledged that Yeshiva undergrads probably gained little from the debate forum. "The conventional wisdom is that debates have very little impact on the distribution of overall opinion in a presidential election race. If a candidate appears to win, then the winner usually picks up about three percentage points," said Dr. Luders. "So, based on these general political science findings based on the broader population, I would say that the debates had little effect upon students."

These findings are not new, and both the Republican and Democratic parties have recognized that while older voters may still pay somewhat attention to the standard debates, they will have to be creative in drawing a younger crowd's allegiance. Both Bush's and Kerry's daughters appeared on MTV's Video Music Awards, trying to give the candidates a younger, hipper image. Senator Kerry even showed up on Comedy Central's increasingly popular "The Daily Show. These methods aren't exactly original (Bill Clinton appeared on "The Arsenio Hall Show" and on MTV while running against Bush's father), but they work: 1.5 million viewers tuned in to see Jon Stewart chat with John Kerry, and a January survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people under 30 say they regularly get their political news from comedy shows.

This may not be true for only young voters. In a In a recent National Annenberg Election Survey, viewers of Stewart's "The Daily Show" tested better than people who watch David Letterman and Jay Leno on a six-question politics quiz, while viewers of all three shows knew more about the background of presidential candidates and their positions on issues than people who don't watch late-night TV. Educated adults are tuning in. According to Comedy Central, "Daily Show" viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education.

Why would a college student, or anyone else for that matter, identify more with the candidates on these shows than at the debates? Possibly because they represent exactly what the debates used to. It took 32 pages in a "memorandum of understanding" to delineate the rules for this year's presidential and vice presidential debates. In the words of Alan Schroeder, author of "Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV, "The stultifying process of candidate preparation has drained the spontaneity out of debates. Because these productions can be so perilous, the leading men become afraid to trust their instincts.

How refreshing it would be if a presidential debater walked onto the stage and simply talked to voters." Venues like The Daily Show are the closest we can get. Yigal Gross, YC '06, who watched the debates and Kerry's interview, said the latter was "very interesting. Jon Stewart was much more spontaneous, and Kerry's personality really came through a lot more." Whether or not the debates are still relevant for the broader population, politicians are starting to recognize that a younger generation is being affected less and less by old tactics. Statistics from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement say that electoral participation by Americans under 25 has declined by fifteen percent since 1972, when 18-21 year olds were first allowed to vote, and that last election, only 42.4 percent of people in that age group eligible to vote (roughly 9.9 out of a possible 26.9 million) did so. Stuffy debates, pompous speeches, and impeccable suits just aren't cutting it anymore. In order not to lose the ever-important youth vote, strategists are going to have to change their old methods, or keep inventing new ways to stay current.