As a bit of training on what to do and not do during all candidates debates, I have watched a few that were available to me online during this campaign, including watching Elizabeth in the leaders debate.
By far, the best debate I’ve witnessed is the one held in BC by the CBC which they called the X-challenge.
It can be viewed online here.
(WARNING!!! – This post is a spoiler, so if you would rather watch the debate without knowing who won, then you should read no further into this post!)
The setup of the debate was as follows:
Can politicians sell an audience of British Columbia polluters on their green platforms smack in the middle of an economic downturn?
Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 10:00 p.m. ET Mark Kelley moderated The X Challenge, a 90-minute debate between four representatives of the main national parties on issues related to the environment. The twist? The audience, made of 100 self-described polluters with different political leanings, voted in real time on who won the debate!
The four participants: Lorne Mayencourt of the Progressive Conservatives, Ujjal Dosanjh of the Liberals, Michael Byers of the New Democratic Party and Adriane Carr of the Green party.
Adriane Carr is, of course, a very able representative of the Green Party, and I watched the debate originally to see her in action.
The 100 person audience of decided voters was chosen based on the current polling in BC, with 40 Conservative voters, 26 NDP voters, 20 Liberal voters and 14 Green voters.
The challenge was to see whether the four party reps could sway enough voters to increase their numbers, and the topic of this debate was entirely on environmental platforms and of course, economic platforms since these are so interrelated.
There were 5 questions posed by audience members with the audience voting on the best response after each of the first 4, and then a final vote for the winner of the whole debate.
The results? An overwhelming victory for Adriane Carr, achieving a final vote of 47%
Way to go Adriane!!!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The question is do we believe the people in the audience are representative of the population at large? I have always found the CBC method of selection suspect. They definitely go out of their way to look for left leaning people. I mean we are talking about a network that gave Avi Lewis his own show!
I can’t say that Adrian was that good a debater since the amount of real debate was not extensive, she was certainly not the most talkative and she stumbled a few times early but it certainly seems her sincerity was a key factor that turned the audience.
So it would seem honesty and believable concern can be paramount in swaying voters if people actually get to see candidates in action, but considering the number of people who don’t do debates, who don’t check out youtube and live simply by the sound bites from CTV or their own preconcieved notions, how much impact can this have on the whole?
I have to believe that if people all got enough detailed infromation from sincere people many votes would change. They would not all go to us naturally but so many people don’t actually realize what they are voting for , or vote from habit that with enough quality information the political man would get one hell of a shake up.