1 Steven Chaffee and Jack Dennis, “Presidential Debates: An Empirical Assessment,” in Ranney, Austin (ed.), The Past and Future of Presidential Debates (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), 75–101.Google Scholar

2 Baker, Kendall and Norpoth, Helmut, “Candidates on Television: the 1972 Electoral Debates in West Germany,” Public Opinion Quarterly 45 (1981), 329–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Middleton, Russell, “National TV Debates and Presidential Voting Decisions,” Public Opinion Quarterly 26 (1962), 426–28;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMiller, Arthur and MacKuen, Michael, “Learning About the Candidates: The 1976 Presidential Debates,” Public Opinion Quarterly 43 (1979), 326–46;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHofstetter, Richard and Buss, Terry, “Politics and Last Minute Television,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (1969), 24–37;Google Scholar and Kazee, Thomas A., “Television Exposure and Attitude Change: The Impact of Political Interest,” Public Opinion Quarterly 45 (1981), 507–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Kraus, Sidney (ed.), The Great Debates (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1962),Google Scholar and The Great Debates: Carter vs. Ford 1976 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1979).Google Scholar See also, Bishop, George, Meadow, Robert, and Jackson-Beeck, Marilyn (eds.), The Presidential Debates: Media, Electoral, and Policy Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1978),Google Scholar and Ranney (ed.), The Past and Future of Presidential Debates.

5 Lang, Kurt and Engel Lang, Gladys, “Immediate and Delayed Responses to a Carter-Ford Debate: Assessing Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 42 (1978), 322–41;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMiller, and MacKuen, , “Learning About the Candidates” Douglas Rose, “Citizen Users of the Ford-Carter Debates,” Journal of Politics 41 (1980), 214–21;Google Scholar Lee Becker, Idowu Sobowale, Robin Cobbey, and Chaim Eyal, “Debates' Effects on Voters' Understanding of Candidates and Issues” and Paul Hagner and Leroy Rieselbach, “The Impact of the 1976 Presidential Debates: Conversion or Reinforcement?” in Bishop, , et al. (eds.), The Presidential Debates, 129–39 and 157–78;Google Scholar and Chafee, Steven and Yuel Coe, Sun, “Time of Decision and Media Use During the Ford-Carter Campaign,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44 (1980), 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See Allan Komberg and Judith Wolfe, “Parliament, the Media, and the Polls,” and Richard Price and Harold Clarke, “Television and the House of Commons,” in Clarke, Harold, Campbell, Colin, Quo, F. Q., and Goddard, Arthur (eds.), Parliament, Policy, and Representation (Toronto: Methuen, 1980), 35–58 and 58–84.Google Scholar

7 Evron Kirkpatrick, “Presidential Candidate Debates: What Can We Learn from 1960?” in Ranney, (ed.), The Past and Future of Presidential Debates, 1–50.Google Scholar

8 Meadow, Robert and Jackson-Beeck, Marilyn, “Issue Evolution: A New Perspective on Presidential Debates,” Journal of Communication 27 (1979), 84–92.Google Scholar

9 Jon Pammett, Harold Clarke, Jane Jenson, and Lawrence LeDuc, “The Politics of Limited Change: The 1979 Federal Election,” Carleton University, Occasional Papers Series, No. 8. See also Clarke, Harold, Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence, and Pammett, Jon, Absent Mandate: The Politics of Discontent in Canada (Toronto: Gage, 1984).Google Scholar

10 Fletcher, Frederick J., “Playing the Game: The Mass Media and the 1979 Campaign,” in Penniman, Howard (ed.), Canada at the Polls 1979 and 1980 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), 280–321.Google Scholar

11 The 1979 National Election Study was directed by Harold Clarke, Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc and Jon Pammett, and was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Field work was conducted by Canadian Facts, Ltd. The study consisted of extensive personal interviews with a national sample of 2,743 eligible Canadian voters immediately following the 1979 federal election. Included in this sample was a panel of 1,338 respondents who were first interviewed in 1974, and a supplementary sample of 149 new voters between the ages of 18 and 23 who were eligible to vote for the first time in 1979. Two questions regarding the debates were asked of a random half-sample of the electorate in this study. The first of these was asked as part of a sequence of campaign activity items: “Did you see the debates between the party leaders on television on Sunday, May 13th?” The second, asked only of those who responded affirmatively to the foregoing question, was: “What were your impressions of the debates, in general?” Responses to the second question were recorded literally, and up to three answers were coded for each respondent.

12 Because language is such an important correlate of exposure to the debates, all subsequent analyses will be conducted for a subset of anglophone respondents only, as well as for the complete half-sample.

13 See Mishler, William, Political Participation in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1979),Google Scholar and Burke, Mike, Clarke, Harold, and LeDuc, Lawrence, “Federal and Provincial Political Participation in Canada: Some Methodological and Substantive Considerations,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 15 (1979), 61–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 The Pearson correlations between watching/not watching the debates and the set of activities shown in Table I range from a high of .22 for “discuss politics with others” to a low of .10 for “contact a public official.” There is also a modest relationship between watching/not watching the debates and such variables as political interest and political efficacy. The Pearson correlations were respectively .29 and .16 against standard scales of political interest and political efficacy.

15 This question was asked of the same random half-sample of the 1979 electorate in the sequence dealing with exposure to the campaign. The exact wording was: “How about television? During the election campaign, did you watch programs or advertisements about the parties or candidates or other aspects of the campaign? Would you say that you saw quite a few, some, or almost none?”

16 The Blishen scale was employed here as a summary measure of socioeconomic status, and the correlation (Pearson r) between watching the debates and this scale was . 14. When the Blishen scale was recorded into four categories (HI, MED-HI, MED-LO, and LO), 64 per cent of those in the highest category were found to have watched the debates, compared with 42 per cent in the lowest SES category. Education produces a similar pattern. Among those with post-secondary education, 60 percent watched the debates while only 44 per cent did so in the lowest education group. The correlation (Pearson r) between education and watching the debates is .10. Age produces a weak pattern (Pearson r= .09). Sixty per cent of those over age 45 watched the debates, and there is no significant difference in this respect among various age groupings over 40. However, only 47 per cent of those under age 30 watched the debates. All of these patterns are similar in both strength and direction to relationships between sociodemographic variables and other passive political activity measures.

17 See Jenson, Jane, “Party Loyalty in Canada: The Question of Party Identification,” this JOURNAL 8 (1975), 543–53;Google Scholar and LeDuc, Lawrence, Clarke, Harold, Jenson, Jane, and Pammett, Jon, “Partisan Instability in Canada: Evidence from a New Panel Study,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 470–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Converse, Philip, “Of Time and Partisan Stability,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (1969), 139–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Fletcher, “Playing the Game,” 286.

20 Respondents were presented with a card depicting a “thermometer,” and were asked to indicate their feelings toward each of the parties, leaders, and local candidates on a 100-point scale. The 50º mark is given as the neutral point on the scale. This measure is explained in some detail in Clarke, , et al., Political Choice in Canada, 406–07.Google Scholar

21 Clark ran behind his party among virtually all groups and in all parts of the country, but not so far behind as did his predecessor, Robert Stanfield, in the 1974 election. See Pammett, et al., “The Politics of Limited Change,” 11-19.

22 A more detailed analysis of the thermometer scores for Broadbent in comparison to those for the NDP generally may be found in Pammett, et al., “The Politics of Limited Change,” 11-19.

23 Clarke, Harold, Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence, and Pammett, Jon, “Voting Behaviour and the Outcome of the 1979 Federal Election: The Impact of the Leaders and Issues,” this JOURNAL 15 (1982), 517–52.Google Scholar See also Clarke, et al., Absent Mandate.

24 Clarke, et al., Absent Mandate.

25 In 1974,19 per cent of a national sample reported deciding how to vote as late as the last week of the campaign. See the more detailed discussion of “time of vote decision” in Clarke, , et al. Political Choice in Canada, 275–78.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 343-50.

27 Hagner and Rieselbach, “The Impact of the 1976 Presidential Debates.”

28 Clarke, et al., Polical Choice in Canada. See also Lawrence LeDuc, “Canada: The Politics of Stable Dealignment,” in Dalton, Russell, Flanagan, Scott, and Allen Beck, Paul (eds.), Electoral Change in Industrial Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 402–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar