An exercise with limited impact

MEXICO CITY (El Universal).— With yesterday, Mexico celebrates 30 years of debates between candidates to occupy the Presidency of the country. Electoral experts and political scientists highlighted that the meetings have a limited impact on citizens’ preferences.

Experts interviewed said that it is in the post-debate and its narrative where the party apparatuses operate to control damage and make their standard-bearers stand out, and it is where a greater impact can be generated. They believed that sometimes when a candidate performs well, nothing happens because the elections are won by the political party machinery.

While countries like the United States have a long history of presidential debates, some of which marked the election, in Mexico these exercises have only been carried out for three decades and include five federal processes to renew the head of the Federal Executive Branch.

In 1994, on May 12, citizens witnessed on primetime television the exchange of ideas between the candidates Ernesto Zedillo (PRI), Diego Fernández de Cevallos (PAN) and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (PRD). It was carried out only with the “leading” candidates of that process. A day before, the “small” candidates, Rafael Aguilar Talamantes (Frente Cardenista), Jorge González Torres (PVEM), and Pablo Emilio Madero (PDM), had their mini-debate but it was the first exercise of that type in our country where it still prevailed the single party.

It was striking that women did not participate in both meetings, who had to wait until 2006 to do so with Patricia Mercado.

In 30 years, in general, the debates have been exercises with cardboard formats, in which the forms and times of participation were taken into account. Some of those episodes were remembered more for events unrelated to the exposure of the contenders, such as in 2012, when aide-de-camp Julia Orayen generated controversies because of her fitted white dress.

The former president of the IFE and consultant on electoral issues Luis Carlos Ugalde said that the non-verbal aspects of the debate are also sometimes more important, such as the temperament of the candidates, emotions, reactions and empathy.

“They have a limited impact on citizens, first, because a good part of those who see them already have a predetermined position and only attend to validate their beliefs, their stigmas, their sympathies and their phobias.”

The post-debate

He mentioned that in addition to this, few people watch the debates and sometimes the narrative that is built in the post-debate is more important, “that it can generate an impact, which, although limited, is greater and that can only be be significant when the elections are close.”

He considered that in the debate “an important issue is temperament, emotions, reactions, empathy and I think that Xóchitl Gálvez has more attributes for this type of exercises, she feels more comfortable to debate, to smile in front of Claudia who is more rigid, which seems uncomfortable in this type of televised encounters.”