With the race between Democrats and Republicans to control the House and Senate now in the homestretch, many candidates are eagerly seeking opportunities to one-up their opponents and secure a last-minute edge – or knockout.Most of those opportunities have or are still coming in the form of the classic, one-on-one debates with Election Day on Nov.3.
But the question remains, do these actually impact the key contests?
To be sure, debates remain a popular part of the political process, and their ability to torch a campaign remains clear.
President Donald Trump and then-President Joe Biden famously squared off in a 2024 debate that effectively ended Biden’s reelection bid. But the outcome was more about Biden’s mental and physical decline than Trump scoring big rhetorical blows.
The potential for a debate to sink a candidate through a poor performance has at least some Democratic candidates deliberately eschewing the face-offs.
Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, has declined to debate GOP challenger Rep. Andy Biggs in her reelection bid, emulating a strategy that worked for her during her bid against Kari Lake in 2022.
Likewise, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has not scheduled any debates against state GOP challenger Attorney General Ken Paxton for the open seat.
Talarico has maintained a roughly 3-point lead over Paxton since early September, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, amid one political school of thought of why risk a bad debate when you have the lead.
Two debates last week attracted considerable media coverage, the Georgia and Michigan Senate races that resulted in viral, contentious video clips in which the candidates appeared to score a hit on their respective opponents.
In the Michigan debate, Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed faced off against Republican Senate candidate and former Rep. Mike Rogers in the battle to replace the retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
El-Sayed narrowly triumphed over Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., in the party primary, though he fell well shy of polling that predicted a landslide for him. Rogers did not face a meaningful primary challenge and was also the party’s 2024 Senate nominee.
The debate saw Rogers attempt to paint El-Sayed as having divided loyalties and radical views. In one viral clips pair traded barbs over their true homes.
Rogers contended that El-Sayed’s true home was in Egypt, to which El-Sayed responded that Rogers owned a home in Florida. Rogers then retorted that El-Sayed owned a home in the United Arab Emirates and that Florida, at least, was inside the United States.
In the Georgia debate, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, pressed GOP challenger Rep. Mike Collins on the scandals of his former campaign staff and attempted to paint him as an extremist.
“Tonight, a united Georgia will hear the trial of Mike Collins,”Ossoff said. “Mike Collins has brought dishonor to our state through his personal bigotry and his widely documented ties to white nationalists. And he’s sold out Georgia in his pathetic child-like devotion to Donald Trump.”
“If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club,” he also said.
While the clips received thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of views, it remains unclear whether either debate changed the dynamic of their respective races. Currently, El-Sayed leads Rogers by 3.2% in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
In Georgia, Ossoff holds an average 7.8% over Collins. No polls have yet emerged in the aftermath of both contests.
Other key Senate races are set to witness debates in the coming weeks, perhaps most notably in Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is vying for a sixth term against former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson. The race was complicated by the withdrawal of Democratic nominee Graham Platner in the face of scandal, and his swift replacement with Jackson.
While the pair have already faced off twice, they are set for two more debates before election day. Barring unexpected developments, however, they could prove a repeat of the prior debates that saw the pair attack one another’s record.
Collins, in Thursday’s debate, attacked Jackson for voting against a bill in the state legislature that she said would have reduced energy costs for residents by $275 a year. Jackson, meanwhile, blasted Collins over the Iran war.
The Maine race is one of the closest of the November contests, with Jackson currently boasting a mere 1.0% average lead in the RealClearPolitics average.
Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.
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