In my my article on this year’s presidential debates, I pointed out that these high-drama election-year rituals seem important to mere citizens and journalists. But political scientists have long claimed there’s no proof that they’ve actually changed the course of election outcomes.
Maybe they’ll say something different when this year’s results are in. At face value, it certainly appears that the first Clinton-Trump debate—a month ago today—marked a clear shift in Hillary Clinton’s favor and against Donald Trump.
Below is a screenshot of the running “polls-plus” prediction of the election’s outcome, from FiveThirtyEight. I’ve added the big black arrow to note the occurrence of the first debate. The thinner vertical lines to the right are the other two debates, each one of which went badly for Trump and, from this chart, seemed to reinforce Clinton’s lead.
As a reminder: debate #2 was the town hall, in which Trump loomed up behind Clinton like a lurker, and #3 was the debate of “such a nasty woman” and “keep you in suspense” (about accepting election outcome).
The screenshot below from the NYT’s“Who Will Be President” tracker shows something similar. Again, the black bar marks the first debate.
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For one more way to look at this question, which is less immediately obvious in graphic terms but cumulatively more convincing, please check out this recent tweet-storm by the U. Michigan economist Justin Wolfers.