Political analysts question whether televising more debates would have sharply improved that situation, however, because public interest often is limited about races at the state and local level.
If Debates Are Televised, Would Voters Watch?
If debates were shown and seen by more people, it would change the public level of knowledge, he said, though he also questioned whether such programming "would have good audiences."
"One of the ways things might be improved is if people were force-fed," Kohut said last Thursday while attending the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. "You'd have a better informed electorate by default."
Hundreds of debates for major offices such as governor, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House were held in the 2000 elections, but many voters couldn't see them if they had wanted to.
Public Debate
The Committee for the Study of the American Electorate conducted the survey of debate coverage in 10 states. It found that two-thirds of the debates in those states were not televised and fewer than one in five debates were televised by network affiliates.
The study focused on major candidate debates -- for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governor -- in California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. The committee conducted the study with help from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The debates televised by outlets not affiliated with a network averaged a 2 percent share of the market -- or less than 1 percent of the eligible voters in the district or state where they were shown.
Two-thirds of the debates for statewide offices in those 10 states -- for governor and U.S. Senate -- were televised. But only half were televised on network outlets, the report said. Only three in 10 congressional debates were televised on any outlet.
That means many voters, especially those who don't closely follow newspaper coverage, got their information about candidates and the races from campaign ads and the scattered coverage they get from local television stations.
"It's a huge problem, especially in New Jersey where you have two dominant media markets that are outside the state -- in New York and Philadelphia," said Monika McDermott, a pollster and senior researcher at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
Minnesota Goes Public
Curtis Gans, director of the committee, said one major exception in 2000 was Minnesota, where outlets for ABC, CBS and NBC agreed to televise one of three debates between Sen. Mark Dayton and former Sen. Rod Grams.
In Minnesota two years earlier, a governor's race debate on public television helped elevate the chances of improbable candidate Jesse Ventura, who was then running under the banner of the Reform Party.
"Many people believe that was one of the key factors that helped him win the election, because a lot of people saw him versus two other flawed candidates," said Rob Daves, director of the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.
Members of the public who don't follow politics may tell pollsters they know more than they do, said Paul Lavrakas, a longtime political pollster who now works for Neilsen Media Research.
He recalled a poll experiment in which a bogus candidate was included in a question to the general public.
"Twenty percent knew of this person," he said. "And when asked who would they vote for, some people said they would vote for this person."
Many people get scattered political information on local races from television news coverage and political ads, said Tom Guterbock, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of Virginia. A televised debate might be their only chance to get a detailed look at the candidates.
"There are some states and races where that opportunity doesn't even exist," he said. "That really worries me. Where are people going to get this knowledge?"
Copyright 2002. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
