GOODY TWO SHOES: Voters Eager To Watch Presidential Debates, But Think Moderators Will Be Biased
Three out of four voters (74 percent) say they are very likely to watch the upcoming presidential debates, but only 25 percent are more interested in the vice presidential debate, according to a Rasmussen national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters.
As with a Rasmussen survey earlier this month, in which 69 percent of participants said reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, 56 percent of those surveyed this time around say debate moderators are biased in their questioning. Of these, 72 percent are Repubs, 57 percent are independents and 41 percent are Dems. Two-thirds of male voters (65 percent) and just under half of female voters (48 percent) say the mods are biased. Overall, 31 percent of voters think the debate mods are “generally unbiased.”
PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer will be moderating the first presidential first debate this Friday evening, and 36 percent of voters don’t know who he is, while 45 percent don’t know what network he works for. Nearly one out of four voters (22 percent think Lehrer will be biased in favor of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) while 43 percent think he will be neutral. Only six percent say he will help Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
Two-thirds of the voters surveyed (67 percent) say the debates are very or somewhat important in determining how they will vote. Half (51 percent) prefer a town hall format where voters from the audience ask questions of the candidates, as compared to 39 percent who are fine with news anchors doing the questioning.
Editorial Note: On a somewhat related issue, Patrick Goldstein, of the Los Angeles Times, asks whether film critics should “be at work on a second front, offering their take on America's politicians,” and cites, in particular, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, who “has been on quite a roll lately, writing a series of barbed commentaries about GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin,” starting with this column in which he called her the “American Idol” candidate. Admitting that “a majority of our readers” probably prefer that movie critics stick to telling them which flicks are worth the $12 ticket price, Goldstein nonetheless thinks that “film critics, like TV and theater critics, are especially well equipped to analyze today's politics” and that “in some ways film critics are probably better equipped to assess the political theater of today's presidential campaigns, since our campaigns are - as has surely been obvious for some time - far more about theater and image creation than politics.”
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