The power of debates to impact the outcome of an election is probably overstated. Voters who are already strongly in favor of one candidate or the other aren’t going to be swayed to think differently by what they see on stage, even if they happen to tune in that night.
Odds are more likely that they will see what they were already predisposed to see: that is, their candidate besting the other.
Debates are really about trying to win over the undecided, or those who may be leaning one way but are still persuadable. In today’s highly polarized political climate, the percentage of voters who fall into these categories is small and steadily shrinking.
Thus, whether Mississippi gubernatorial candidates Tate Reeves and Jim Hood debate once, twice or three times, it probably won’t matter a whole lot come Nov. 5, when voters go to the polls.
Thus, the jockeying between Reeves and Hood about where and when they will debate is mostly an exercise in one-upmanship.
Interestingly, neither of them was all that crazy about debating during the primaries. Since both were the perceived front-runners in their respective parties, they each saw little to gain from giving their lesser-funded opponents the free exposure that comes from debates.
Reeves, the Republican nominee, is claiming that Hood is trying to avoid providing voters with a side-by-side comparison since the Democrat has so far agreed to only one debate — in Hattiesburg on Oct. 10. Hood says he’s fine with three debates, but he wants them to be spread out around the state — presumably so that more of the state’s TV audience will see at least one of them, since none of the local network affiliates covers the entire state.
After some dickering, the two will probably settle on more than one face-off. With the general election expected to be close, neither Reeves nor Hood can honestly say which needs the most the free publicity that a debate can bring.
