Donald Trump’s debating style needs some work if he wants to persuade undecided voters this November, according to one politics watcher.
After all, that’s the point of a debate, to try to convince people who haven’t made up their mind yet to vote for you, said Tim Powers, vice-chairman of Summa Strategies and a former Conservative strategist. And one way to do that is to address their concerns.
“That was what he didn’t do much of last night, speak to the people in the room about them,” said Powers. “He talked a lot about himself, which reality television stars do, and he played a lot off of his personality and he talked about things that were irritating people, but he didn’t really talk to people I thought in a way that demonstrated he got their challenges.”
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did a slightly better job of that, he said, by telling stories about an architect and a hotel worker.
READ MORE: Trump v. Clinton debate – Who won? Here’s what pundits, pollsters are saying
Peter Loewen, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, agrees that Clinton performed a bit better. “Hillary Clinton appeared more prepared than Donald Trump. She appeared more in command of the issues that were in front of her. She certainly appeared, I think, calmer and more in control.”
Typically, debates don’t change the candidates’ poll numbers very much, said Loewen. “There are some people who are persuaded by these things, but we’ve got to do the math on it, right? How many people are genuinely undecided? How many of them are watching the debate? How many people are actually going to be persuaded by what they saw?”
“If you saw for example a candidate getting a two or three point bump out of a debate, that would be very impressive,” he said.
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But – in an American election, a two or three point bump could matter.
“I think the important thing to remember is American elections are pretty close generally. Candidates don’t win 60-40, they don’t win 65-35. If you have a 10-point spread, that’s pretty enormous in the American case,” he said. “We’re not talking about great big leads, so even small effects from debates kind of matter.”
According to the latest polling average from FiveThirtyEight.com, the race is indeed pretty close at the moment: Clinton at 42.4 per cent of the vote and Trump at 41 per cent, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson at 7.5 per cent.
That still leaves about nine per cent of voters unaccounted for or voting for other candidates, and the Libertarian vote may be persuaded towards the Republicans or Democrats. And debates are unlikely to swing hardcore supporters of any party, said Powers.
“The Clinton partisans and the Trump partisans, none of this has any bearing because in their eyes both of their candidates won comprehensively last night and there is no middle ground. But they don’t matter as much as the people in the middle or the independents.”
So Trump needs to change his tune, at least a little, to appeal to those voters. “I think Trump needs to talk less about himself and more about them,” he said. “He’s got to get more connected to the public and their needs and wants and aspirations.”
And Clinton? “She’s got to be a little more nimble on finding the opportunity to go after Trump,” said Powers. Bringing up what Trump has said about women in the past was a good start, he thinks. “She’s got to find a few more of these narrative vulnerabilities that Trump has and go after them on a more consistent basis.”
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