Televised debates help clarify and condense the 2016 presidential field

After a summer of confusion and sprawl, the shape of the 2016 race for president is beginning to solidify.

Democrats are coalescing around Hillary Clinton. The Republican race remains fluid, but marginal candidates are dropping out and a “final four” may soon emerge.

And in both parties, experts say, the televised debates among the candidates — the subject of much criticism and derision — have played a key role in defining the field.

“The debates have been crucial,” said Stu Rothenberg, a nationally known political analyst and columnist.

Three Democratic candidates will take part in a televised “forum” Friday night on MSNBC, while Republicans plan another debate Tuesday on the Fox Business Network.

If past is prologue, the exchanges will draw big audiences. The first Republican debate on Fox drew 24 million viewers, 7 million more than Game 5 of the World Series. Fifteen million people watched the only Democratic debate so far, on CNN.

“Voters are literally shopping,” said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University in Topeka. “They’re open to exploring.”

Clinton’s debate performance on Oct. 13 solidified her campaign, political scientists and consultants believe. Two marginal candidates — Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee — dropped out shortly after it ended. Vice President Joe Biden declined to run, convinced he couldn’t win.

When Democrats hold their forum Friday, only Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland will share the program with Clinton. Neither is now considered a long-term threat to the former secretary of state’s candidacy, although unforeseen news damaging to Clinton could change that picture.

The Republican race remains much more crowded and fluid than the Democratic race. Yet polls and pundits think the GOP debates have established a rough blueprint for the race. Businessman Donald Trump and physician Ben Carson will remain contenders for some time, with plenty of campaign cash, lean organizations and the “outsider” tag many GOP primary voters prefer. Carly Fiorina, a former businesswoman, may have less staying power, some of them say.

A tea party conservative, most likely Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, will claim a third spot in the informal finals, analysts think.

A final GOP spot will probably go to a candidate preferred by the party’s establishment. Likely contenders include Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Early Republican favorites — Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and especially former Florida governor Jeb Bush — are seriously struggling, polls show, both damaged by poor debate performances. Two candidates, Rick Perry and Scott Walker, have already quit, also hurt by lackluster debates.

The GOP race is far from decided, of course. Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib called the candidates’ last raucous debate in Colorado “a moment in which the race still felt unsettled, less an orderly march behind a clear front-runner than a disorderly scrum that may be far less predictable.”

Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas and one-time adviser to then Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius, agreed.

“We’re one big gaffe away from Trump exploding,” he said. “Or you can see a debate descending into chaos.”

Yet the start of the 2016 race is clearly ending, and the outline is coming into focus. The Iowa caucuses, the first actual test for the candidates, are now less than three months away.

Style over substance

The debates have influenced Iowans, “certainly on the Republican side,” said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines and a longtime student of the Iowa caucuses.

The exchanges have focused far more on style than substance, he noted, largely because the policy differences among the candidates are small.

Marvin Overby, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, said early debates are about personality, not policy.

“Primary debates tend to be … about presence, likability, temperament,” he said.

That focus helps explain why the Republican campaigns have fought bitterly over the rules for future debates. To date, the GOP debates have featured no fewer than 10 candidates each. In a two- or three-hour exchange, with commercial interruptions, breaks and arguments, some candidates have struggled to be heard or seen.

Some of the campaigns — but not all — have lobbied the Republican National Committee to consider more friendly panelists for coming debates and a redistribution of the time candidates are allowed to speak. The RNC has suspended a proposed February presidential debate on NBC, but a resolution of format and moderator issues remains up in the air.

Some Republican candidates have criticized other campaigns for complaining about debate questions.

The current format seems to have hurt Jeb Bush as much as any other GOP hopeful. Bush has yet to stand out in any debate, and his poll numbers have slipped dramatically as a result.

“The debates have boosted the prospects of Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina,” Rothenberg said. “Jeb Bush, on the other hand, has suffered.”

In a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Bush had the highest unfavorable rating of any GOP hopeful: 58 percent. Just 4 percent of Republican voters nationally supported Bush in the poll, far behind Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Carson.

Bush still has some backing among Iowa Republicans, support that will be critical if the brother of one president and son of another is to recover.

“There are a lot of what you would call establishment Republicans here who still support Jeb Bush,” Goldford said.

Bush was believed to have a money advantage, but that has slipped in recent weeks. Federal Election Commission records show Carson has raised the most money in the GOP field, $31.4 million. Cruz is next with $26.6 million, followed by Bush at $24.8 million. Trump has raised $5.8 million, including $1.9 million from his own pocket. (The figures don’t include money raised for political action committees aligned with the candidates.)

But Bush has been spending money at a far faster rate than his opponents. He recently announced major cutbacks in campaign staffing and salaries.

Republicans in Iowa, like those in the rest of the nation, continue to gravitate to outsiders such as Trump and Carson, polls show. Next Tuesday’s GOP debate isn’t likely to change that, at least in the short term.

The Democrats’ Friday exchange in South Carolina is billed as a forum for Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley. It won’t resemble a traditional debate. Hosted by Democrat-friendly Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, it will feature individual live interviews with each candidate without a planned formal exchange of views.

Virtually every outside observer said Clinton’s performance in the first debate dramatically helped her chances of winning her party’s nomination.

“Hillary has snapped her campaign back into fighting form,” concluded Democratic political consultant Martin Hamburger.

The debate “really solidified her as the front-runner,” Loomis said.

Goldford said Sanders still draws good crowds in Iowa because “he speaks to the Democratic ‘id,’ ” but he may struggle to gain more than 35 to 40 percent of the caucus vote. He may do better in New Hampshire — the first primary state is next door to Sanders’ Vermont.

Clinton is expected to do well in the primaries and caucuses that follow, including Missouri’s.

General election

The eventual major party nominees will debate next October. Yet it’s likely those debates will have far less influence on the outcome than the primary debates now underway.

“They make little difference,” Overby said, “if by difference we mean changing people’s minds.”

Beatty has studied presidential campaigns and debates.

“The top two predictors of how people vote in a general election are the state of the economy and party identification,” he said, not debates.

Recent polls suggest a tight race next year. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday paired Clinton with a number of potential Republican opponents. The Democrat defeats Bush, Trump and Rubio, the poll shows, but ties Carson at 47 percent of the vote.

Much can change over the next year, and will. But analysts and political pros think we can see the likely matchup: Clinton against either an outsider such as Trump or Carson or a more establishment figure such as Rubio.

Ted Cruz does get some support. The win of a tea party Republican in Kentucky on Tuesday suggests conservative voters will play an important role next year.

And the political environment is likely to be different next November.

“This is a long game,” blogger and Democratic consultant Peter Fenn recently wrote. “We are just getting out of the gate.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Televised debates help clarify and condense the 2016 presidential field."