Calling the result of the final Irish election debate

Here is the article I submitted to http://www.electiondebate.org/ about last night's debate between the leaders of the three, currently, largest political parties.  I think most people, myself included, will be relieved they are finally over and those of us in Ireland can finally get down to voting on Friday.

This was the long awaited three way debate between Enda Kenny (FG), Michael Martin (FF) and Eamon Gilmore (Labour). After some fairly bland opening statements the debate started divided into a number of sections.



Economy: At times this felt like it was going around in circles partly because most of this had already been trashed out in the earlier debates so they all knew what the others were going to say. Also the moderator Miriam O’Callaghan had a habit of asking questions that have been dealt with 5 minutes before which didn’t help. In this section Kenny did well and probably came out on top mainly because he refused to be dragged down into the row. At times he looked like a bored parent trying to ignore two children squabbling. It would have been nice to see more passion from him but he focused on his core answers and because he refused to get into a row he was able to clearly put his arguments across. Gilmore was probably stylistically better at times but his facts didn’t seem as strong as Kenny who had clearly well researched backup data for his proposals. Throughout this section Martin was being hammered for his record in government and clearly expected this and decided to go back to his strategy of attack being the best form of defence which worked well in the first debate. However this time he ran into a tag team. When he attacked Kenny, Gilmore would come in next and attack him. When he attacked Gilmore the statesman like Kenny would come in and scold Martin for his past performances. At the end of this Martin looked frustrated.

Tax and cuts: In this section Kenny was under more attack on his policies. Telling people to look up www.finegael.ie to get the details just struck me as a cop out. He seemed unable to answer the questions and was resorting back to stock prepared answers and he and got pulled on it when Martin highlighted Kenny’s standard lines of Legacy, 5 year plan and fist in the air. Martin was aggressive on the attack accusing both Kenny and Gilmore of not being specific. The fact that he didn’t give a lot of detail beyond “we have published detailed budgets for each department” may not have given any more detail than the others but it sounded more convincing. Gilmore drifted out of the debate for a while but was strong in defence of his policies and well capable to bring the fight back to Martin’s record in Government.

Jobs: This section felt like it lacked some focus not helped by O’Callaghan asking strange questions (talk about how we can make the banks increase credit flowing to businesses but don’t mention the banks in your answer). Stylistically they were all fairly level. Gilmore did well on catching the other two on flaws such as the nature of strategic state assets. He just about shaded this segment for me but at this point it felt as though the debate was taking a breather for a few minutes.


Health: In this section we were back to Kenny and Gilmore teaming up to attack Martin on his record. In a similar strategy to the first section when Martin would attack one of the others the third would come in and force Martin back on the defensive. At times it was a withering assault on Martin’s record. The only blows Martin managed to land in return were both on Kenny in relation to some flaws in Kenny’s Dutch health model and on losing 8000 health care workers from the system. Gilmore’s proposal to retain but reform the HSE seemed to get less scrutiny and came across as a more balanced approach.


The last two segments (Social Justice and Leadership) were more closing statements than a debate.


So in terms of the winners or losers in the debate it’s tight to call a winner but for me there is a clear loser. Martin comes third because his attack approach now came across as anger and frustration rather than conviction over what he was saying. He found himself out gunned and couldn’t avoid the attacks on his record in government. Kenny and Gilmore both had to achieve different things in this and to a certain degree they will both have succeeded in that. Kenny while suffering a few blows from Martin and perhaps overplaying the aloof statesman strategy in the first segment will be happy that he didn’t make any major blunders and landed a few blows himself. Gilmore will, by now, have given up on any chance of being Taoiseach and that freed his hands a bit more than the first two way debate. He could engage more in his natural aggressive style and also benefitted from his proposals not coming under the same scrutiny as Kenny’s and Martin’s. Kenny and Gilmore will both be happy going away from tonight’s debate but Martin won’t be as happy as he was after the first two debates.


To conclude while this was a debate between individuals if I was marking it like a worlds style debate I feel a team debate style oral adjudication is actually quite appropriate. It was an opposition sweep with the 2nd opposition team (Gilmore) taking the debate narrowly from 1st Opposition (Kenny) both stylistically and on the fact that more of his “extensions” were still standing at the end of the round having been largely ignored by a government side (Martin) who saw his case dismantled.

Final Irish leaders debate tonight

Last week's 5-way debate

The fourth (or third if you don't include the Irish language one) and final leaders debate in the Irish General Election campaign will be on this evening at 9:35pm local time.

The debate will feature the three main party leaders (Enda Kenny, Michael Martin, Eamon Gilmore).  It will be hosted by Miriam O’Callaghan a vetern host of a number of leaders debates from past campaigns.

Unlike last week this one will open with brief statements from each leader and then go into the questions.  It is scheduled to last an hour and there will be no audience.  If you want to follow it from overseas it will be available on http://www.rte.ie/

Once again the team at Election Debates will be judging it as independent observers.  Check in there later tonight for the adjudications.

Some thoughts about leaders debates

With the third and final Irish election leaders debates coming up on Tuesday I thought I would summarise some of my thoughts about the debates. It is based on being applied to an election leaders debate but at the same time many of the concepts can be applied to any debating or interview format.

1. Body language is often cited as a key factor to watch for but it is often overstated as generally speakers will start off nervous and then relax into it. While they will find it hard to hide being tense and nervous they will be prepped well enough not to wipe their brow when asked a difficult question as Nixon did in the debate with Kennedy. If anything their fear of making an inadvertent gesture will make them appear more rigid and nervous at the beginning. As they settle into the debate and get more comfortable then an adequately prepared debater will become more natural in their body language. If they continue to appear rigid then they may have been over coached on avoiding a particular gesture that their support team may feel comes across badly to the audience. At the same time if there is a repeated gesture that comes across as unnatural (e.g. thumping the podium) then it may be that they have been asked to incorporate a new, alien, gesture into their body language which is never a good idea. Natural is almost always most convincing.

2. Watch for the same phrase over and over. Political debaters are sometimes briefed to use a party slogan as often as possible. The success of slogans like “Yes we can” means political handlers now think they need to have a similar catchy slogan to summarise the tone and content of their campaign. It rarely happens with the success of “Yes we can” but even Obama didn’t use “yes we can” in the debates. A poorly prepared political debater may think they should use the party slogan repeatedly (especially if they get a good reaction the first time) but they can easily use it to the point where it will become annoying and counterproductive. Slogans are best left to the posters and the party rallies.

3. Watch their eye contact but bear in mind that an issue here may be a fault of the candidate or the TV director. If the debate is happening in front of a live audience then the tendency will be to speak to the audience. However if the TV director may have set up his cameras at an angle to avoid blocking the view of the audience which in turn means the debater is on TV from the side and never makes eye contact with the TV audience (as I recall this happened to one of the candidates in the first UK general election debate). However, to the other extreme, an over coached debater may address the camera at all times and will appear to be staring out of the TV at the audience. The best approach will be a balance of addressing the camera, the audience, the moderator and the opponent depending on which approach is most natural at the time. Separate to that their support team should have worked with the TV director in advance to make sure there is a good camera angle for each of those options.

4. Watch out for the leader failing to answer the question asked. You might say it is easier to count the questions that are answered. This is because political debaters are often briefed to avoid difficult questions by going back to the party line. Most voters are aware of this tactic and hate it. Most interviewers or moderators will also pick up on it and may highlight it with a follow up question. The more questions the debater fails to address the more votes he/she is losing. It may be that the debater wants to address an issue that they didn’t get to mention before the last area of the debate was closed off. Then they should deal with it in 10 to 15 seconds and get immediately onto the current topic. However the overriding instinct should be to address the question asked.

5. Watch for a pause (or waffle) accompanied by a distant stare or squint as they try to recall a difficult fact that they clearly have been told but not understood. Here they are trying to remember one of the pages of facts and talking points they have been given by an assistant. They may well get it but this is a sign that it is not something they really understand. The best debaters will understand the issue first and then the facts to back it up will be much easier to recall. The best debaters will also recognise this in their opponent and may pursue the issue seeking to expose their rival’s lack of knowledge.

6. Watch out for them discussing issues at a high theoretical level. They should be aiming to engage with the individual average voter but too often they will address topics with a language and tone that is best suited to addressing a meeting of the economists and academics that have spent the last couple of weeks briefing them. Political parties often draft in leading figures in an area to prepare their debaters. However being an expert in an issue does not mean you are the best person to lead on that issue. Addressing topics with a theoretical or academic approach will not come across well to the voters who may not understand the nuanced detail of the issue but will understand how it impacts on them in day to day life. The person who wins the debate will be the person who persuades most of the floating average voters that they best understand their situation. That person may not be the one the highly educated academics and journalists declare to be the winner. I think the best way to sum this up is: Don’t tell them what is wrong and why it is wrong. Tell them what is wrong and how you are going to fix it.

7. Outgoing government party leaders are rarely popular in times of economic hardship. Everyone expects them to be torn apart on their performance in government. Therefore they will often resort to the philosophy that attack is the often the best form of defence. They will accuse the opposition of having poorly defined policies. They will accuse them of being ill informed or nor seeing the whole picture. They will accuse them of making populist promises which are not practical in reality. All of this is predictable. However instead of expecting this many opposition leaders seem shocked that they are the ones being attacked. They may have spent the past 4-5 years on the attack and defence does not come naturally to them. They find themselves on the back foot and become defensive both in outlook and body language (e.g. tightly clasped hands). The default position in their debate prep should be that they will be attacked. They should have a couple of brief defences prepared and then plan to go back on the attack just as hard.

8. Leading on from the previous point about being on the back foot, leaders shouldn’t worry about their mistakes in the debate. If they are looking back at what has already happened in the debate instead of forward to the current/next topic then they are more likely to run into further trouble. It is natural to be self critical but only they know exactly what they intended to say. If the message was delivered but not in the way they had designed they should not worry about it. If they have been absolutely destroyed on a topic (and that is rare) then they must put it behind them and focus on performing well on the remaining topics.

For more information on Election debating visig http://www.electiondebates.org/ which is a website set up to give independent analysis of TV leaders debates.

Irish Leaders Debate 2: Enda Kenny Wins

Here is the adjudication of the Second Irish election leaders debate I submitted to http://electiondebates.wordpress.com/.

To me the format was a problem. The questions at times were not clearly thought out and the result was that the moderator Pat Kenny had to guide the debate more than I would have liked. There really were no stand out performances and the speaker points are less than last week’s debate. But that is mainly due to the disjointed nature of a five way debate. It is further complicated in that each speaker will have gone into the debate seeing to achieve different things and so will have had different approaches. For example Enda Kenny will have wanted to avoid serious trouble while Michael Martin will have wanted to remain on the offensive to keep the focus away from the failings of the outgoing government. Eamon Gilmore will have wanted to show that he can compete with the two bigger parties (or at least historically bigger). Gerry Adams and John Gormley will both have wanted to shore up their core support and won’t have minded if their arguments alienate more voters than they attract.



So to look at the individual speakers as I ranked them and giving them points based on the Worlds format.


1. Enda Kenny 75 - He needed to look like a Taoiseach in waiting and in that respect he probably carried the debate. He stayed out of some of the conflicts and left the others fight it out while he looked on. When he did allow himself to get drawn into a conflict it seemed to be only on areas where he knew he would be strong. Given this tactic he rarely looked under pressure, other than when Gilmore challenged him on his growth figures, and certainly there were very fewer punches landed on him than on the others. He sort of glided through the middle to win the debate.


2. Michael Martin: 73 - Continuing on from last week he was the most combative of the five speakers. He tried to go on the offensive at times but this format was not as suitable for aggression as last week. He attacked Adams repeatedly and was instrumental in undermining Adam’s arguments. Later he was ganged up on by the others over his history in health department. However he did well in defending his vision of a health system where the focus is on survival rates. That said he simply was not able to answer the charge of being in government for 14 years and achieving very little. On balance when comparing Martin, Gilmore and Gormley his combative style nudges him to the head of this small pack.


3. John Gormley: 72 - He came across as honest about the failings in government and committed to the green agenda. He worked the carbon levy, wind power, wave power etc into his argument at every possible opportunity. In this respect he will have appealed to his green base but I felt it sometimes had the effect of putting his arguments out on a tangent from the others. At times this worked to differentiate him in the minds of the audience but at other times it isolated him and some of his key points didn’t engage with any of the others. As one of the two smaller parties he seemed to get less time than the leaders of the main parties. I get the feeling that had Gormley been allowed more time to speak then his honest approach and clear green policies may have had to be dealt with more by the others but we have to judge it based on what did happen not what might have been.


4. Eamon Gilmore: 71 - He didn’t look very assured in the debate. He was more combative than last week but he also seemed to suffer most from the short time to speak as he was not always getting into his full stride before being cut off. Of all the leaders I am less informed about what he is proposing than any of the others. He seemed to be arguing on vague sound bites (balance between cuts and increased revenue, “passionate for reform”) but was lacking in specifics. You can blame the format but throughout the debate I had more of an idea of what the other parties stood for. His high point was the conflict with Kenny over Fine Gael’s growth figures but after that he faded badly.


5. Gerry Adams: 69 - He had a clear “team line” on his vision for a Real Republic. He had a couple of lines prepared to work into every possible topic but when you went beyond the sound bite there were holes in his figures. While I criticised Gilmore for being vague Adams was too specific for his own good at times. He could not answer how he would take 7 billion from 4.9 billion. His biggest proposal for savings seemed to be by cutting politicians salaries which really doesn’t seem to add up to the half a billion he claimed. At times he went back to his old stock and trade of beating the republican drum at times and calling on the memory of “our patriot dead”. He allowed himself to get rattled on the allegations of fraud and he suffered in that his figures were the most picked apart by the others. In this respect he came clearly last.


So that’s Kenny winning the debate with Martin in second, Gormley in 3rd, Gilmore 4th and Adams 5th. Given the messy format of the debate I don’t know if it will translate into any more votes for the parties but certainly it sets up for an interesting final English Language debate next week.

Election debates cover the 2nd Irish leaders debate

The election debates blog (http://electiondebates.wordpress.com/) will be covering the second Irish election leaders debate on the Frontline tonight at 9:35pm on

Last week's TV3 debate

RTE

Last week Michael Martin (Fianna Fail) was deemed the winner of the two way debate against Eamon Gilmore (Labour).  Tonight we have a five way debate with Enda Kenny (Fine Gael), John Gormley (Greens) and Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) joining the debate.

Everyone seems to have written off this five way format (and the upcoming Irish Language debate) with the focus on the next 3 way debate next week.  That said it will be interesting to watch it tonight.

The Frontline is a live show in front of an audience and they normally have panel discussions.  Hopefully this will be a debate rather than a panel discussion.  The host is Pat Kenny.  He is best known as a former host of the Late Late Show but you could see that he really was not interested in the light entertainment aspect of hosting a chat show.  His real strength is in current affairs and he has been doing well on the Fontline for the last couple of years.

For our international viewers the debate should be on live http://www.rte.ie/.  The frontline takes e-mails, tweets, texts etc and often international ones come in so this should also be accessable online for people (Irish emigrants or just those with an interest) based outside Ireland.

The leaders will be standing behind podiums. In the centre will be the three main parties (Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour) with positions drawn by lots. The two smaller parties (Greens & Sinn Fein) will be in the end positions again with positions drawn by lots.


The result of that draw was a standing order on stage of (Left to Right) Adams (SF), Martin (FF), Kenny (FG), Gilmore (Lab), Gormley (Gr)

There will be no opening statements. They will start immediately with questions.

The audience will ask the questions. They have been selected by Milward Brown an independent polling company. They are meant to be reflective of the general population profile. As of 10am the host, Pat Kenny, said he did not know what the questions were. The leaders won’t know the questions until they are asked.

The questions can be general (in which Pat Kenny will decide who answers first) or specifically for one leader (after which the other leaders will also have time to answer). After asking the question the audience will not be permitted to come back in or to heckle in any way.

The debate will last an hour.  Hopefully the questions will be allowed to be fully debated and there won't be the same rush to get through 10 questions as there was last week.

Martin wins the first round of leaders debates

Here is the adjudication of the fist Leaders debate in the Irish General Election campaign that I submitted to http://electiondebates.wordpress.com/.

This was a debate of two halfs. The first half was surprisingly bruising and enjoyable as two of the best debaters in Irish politics went head to head. The second half in contrast seemed very disjointed as they raced to cover all 10 topics on the list having only got through 3 in the first half. I believe the fault for this lies with the format of the debate and the determination of the moderator, Vincent Brown, to check every box on his list. It needed to be 4 topics shorter or 40 minutes longer.



Michael Martin (Fianna Fail) opened up with a speech talking about moving from politics as usual and the need for radical change. This was interesting coming from someone who was a minister in the government for the past 13 years. He appeared slightly nervous but got into his stride. Eamon Gilmore (Labour) spoke about a “lousy government”, a broken government and a vision of a people of equals. So from these opening statements you would think that we were listening to two leaders from the opposition rather than a government and opposition and this approach was to set the tone for the rest of the debate.


I dislike debates like this where the participants are sitting down and would have preferred to see them at podiums where there is nowhere to hide. Allowing for that Martin’s body language was fluid and aggressive. Gilmore looked shocked at times and kept his hands defensively clasped in front of him for much of the time as he seemed to wonder how he was the one being attacked.


Gilmore referred to Martin as “Minister” repeatedly even though he is no longer a minister. This was an attempt to cement the link between Martin and the unpopular outgoing government and perhaps a glimpse of the line of attack Gilmore was sent in with. But beyond that Gilmore rarely got a chance to go on the offensive.


After the opening statements they then turned to a wide range of topics. These topics were so different and disjointed that they could almost be considered individual stand alone debates. There was a lack of a theme (or team line for want of a better description) from either side that could be seen as tying their various overall proposals into a single vision. There were nuggets of it in Martin talking about moving away from “politics as usual” and Gilmore stating that “the Labour party is the party of work”. Had they developed these more and linked it to each segment then perhaps we would have had a more coherent overall argument and vision from each side. Instead we got 10 different debates of varying standard. They were so different they are worth briefly addressing as almost stand alone debates:


1. The Budget Deficit: Martin opened with a brief speech that was heavy on figures and facts. Gimore was more vague on specifics and this allowed Martin to go on the offensive accusing Gilmore of chopping and changing and wanting to increase taxes and cut spending. Gilmore tried to respond but Martin kept attacking. Clearly Martin was better prepped on the facts and figures. It was also interesting that straight away it was the popular opposition that was on the defensive in the face of attacks by the unpopular government. 10 minutes in and Martin looked determined and forceful while Gilmore looked shell shocked under the assault.


2. IMF EU deal: Gilmore wanted the deal to be renegotiated on three areas. Martin responded by bringing the bailout down to paying for wages for teachers, police etc. He then rebutted the points made by Gilmore so straight away we were back to Martin on the offensive and Gilmore defending his policies. Every argument Gilmore made was immediately attacked by Martin and again he looked utterly surprised that he was the one on the back foot.


3. Disowning the 50 billion bank debt. Martin spoke first and his aggressive style emerged straight away with him asking Brown to repeat the question and then starting his response with “No Vincent”. This little interaction was typical of an approach that made it seem like his response was off the cuff and not canned. In contrast Gilmore’s responses to questions generally sounded scripted and prepared in advance. After the opening statements Martin went straight on the offensive attacking Gilmore’s policies and defending government policies by bringing the issue back to the impact on ordinary people with “chaos on the streets” had the decision not been taken. Gilmore was also on the offensive but in contrast was speaking about the opinions of professors. This was a better performance by Gilmore who finally seemed to be getting into his stride but on balance again this round went to Martin


At this pont we had an ad break and it seemed to suck the momentum out of what had been an enjoyable debate up to now.


4. Job Creation. Gilmore spoke about labour being the party of work and outlined proposals to boost job creation. Martin opened by talking about meeting ordinary people worried about their children and outlined a number of areas where he would boost job creation. There was no real clash here and they broadly agreed on many policies so Brown quickly moved on to another topic.


5. Health system: Martin opened by talking about targeting certain diseases and making the HSE more efficient. Gilmore spoke about overhauling the whole health system with universal health insurance. Martin immediately attacked this talking accusing Labour and Fine Gael of privatising healthcare and in response Gilmore attacked Martin’s record in government and in particular in health. Gilmore repeatedly referred to Martin as Minister so that no one would be in doubt that he was part of the government.. Martin looked rattled and under pressure for the first time in this segment. This was a clear clash of alternative policies and this was Gilmore’s best segment so far.


6. Education: Specifically the “motion” was should the government continue to fund private schools. Gilmore opened this segment talking about bringing private schools back into the public system but it felt like he was waffling through a question he was not prepared for. Martin put the focus on his track record in special needs education and expansion of third level and resulting innovation. It sounded good but was not related to the motion on private schools. Gilmore responded by saying he agreed and would add that the issue of literacy problems at the bottom of the education system should be availed of. So the actual topic for discussion was largely ignored by both candidates. Brown quickly saw that this segment was going nowhere and moved on.


7. Ministerial pensions: Martin defended his severance pay as minister by outlining how he was actually out of pocked by remaining in politics while other ministers are retiring. He pointed out that Gilmore, and Enda Kenny, both benefitted from similar payments when they were voted out of office in the past and that seemed to take the wind out of any attack Gilmore was planning. Instead Gilmore advocated independent review of politicians pay and pensions. Brown never gave the debate a chance to develop.


8. Parliamentary reform: Gilmore outlined changes to make the parliament work longer and produce more legislation. He also advocated abolishing the Senate. Martin proposed a single seat system backed up by a list system. He also proposed that Ministers should not be members of parliament and should be opened up to external experts. Brown yet again tried to move on without discussion but was stopped by Martin. Gilmore jumped at the chance to go on the attack on Martin’s policies and why he had not done anything after 13 years in government. Martin responded strongly about Gilmore’s lack of reform after 30 years in parliament and that his proposals were marginal at best. This seemed to surprise Gilmore who now ended up on the back foot defending his proposals and Labour’s record of reform.


9. Public service reform: Martin supported the Croke Park agreement and the flexibility that gives. Gilmore spoke about bringing service back into public service and also supporting the Croke Park agreemend. Brown ended this before it could go beyond opening statements so there was no clash and the round was at best a draw if even that.


10. Coalition partners: Martin produced a canned response about Fianna Fail’s focus in the next Dail being about implementing policies and how that would determine what they would do. Gilmore spoke about having the objective of Labour being the largest party for the first time in the history of the state. The only party he ruled out going into power with was Fianna Fail. Martin responded that the people were sick of this politics of power. Gilmore fought back accusing Martin of wanting to forget that Fianna Fail was in power for the last 13 years and did Martin know the damage done to ordinary people. This was the best clash of the second half and Gilmore finally seemed to be getting into his stride just as the debate was ending.

This debate could have been Hamlet without the prince with Enda Kenny fleeing to the other side of the country to avoid it. Certainly whatever concerns Enda Kenny had about Brown as moderator did not materialise as if anything Brown was bullied by the two candidates which actually made for a better debate in the first half. Kenny’s presence would only have detracted from this debate.


So on balance after reviewing this debate in both style and substance I have to say Martin is the clear winner with a score of 82. He was better on the facts and figures. He seemed to have a better understanding of the plight of ordinary people. And he was stylistically aggressive throughout.  Gilmore never really got going in the first half and the second half was very fragmented.  I score him 73.

Election debates to cover Irish general election

The international blog "Election Debates" will be covering upcoming Irish General Election. 

The Election Debates blog is dedicated to improving the quality of election debates by critically assessing quality and performance.  In recent years it has covered a number of elections including the US presidential debates and the general election debates in the UK, Canada and New Zealand. 

It assesses debates based on the World Championships Rules and the adjudicators are made up of an international panel of highly experienced judges so you get an honest and fair assessment of the performance of the political leaders.

UK Leaders' Oratory

You may be interested in a a new website that has just launched.


http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/ has been created as part of an academic research project, archiving political speeches (at present many are leaders' speeches to party conference, the oldest from 1895.

The long-term goal of the site is to raise interest in, and understanding of political speech and rhetoric, especially among academics, politicians and political commentators; to promote discussion about what makes a good or a bad speech and what might make British political rhetoric better.

Users can leave comments on the speeches, perhaps recollections of seeing them delivered or critical comment about their form and content.

There is also a facility allowing people to ‘donate’ speeches so that the archive can become a truly comprehensive record of the many modes of British Political Speech.

Please make use of the site and feel free to forward information about it.


Many thanks
Dr. Alan Finlayson
Swansea University
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/
twitter: @britpolspeech

Analysis of 2nd UK election debate tonight on www.electiondebates.org

Tonight sees the second of the leaders' debate in the UK general election. 

Ray D'Cruz has posted an analysis of what the three leaders need to do to improve tonight.  You can find this analysis (and the adjudications from last week) on http://www.electiondebates.org/

Last week the judges on Election Debates were evenly divided between Brown and Clegg.  Will it be "I agree with Nick" tonight or will Brown and Cameron form an unusual 90 minute coalition to eliminate the upstart before the final debate next week.  Tonight's debate is on Sky News at 8pm. 

UK Election Debates start tonight.

Coverage of the UK election debates will commence tonight on the election debates blog (http://electiondebates.wordpress.com/). Shortly after the conclusion of each debate, the electiondebate judges will start posting their verdict and analysis until a panel verdict is announced: the official Election Debates position.


Election Debates’ commitment is to improve the quality of election debate analysis. They apply the rules of debate to ensure an impartial, unbiased assessment, regardless of the adjudicators personal or political opinions.

Debate Mate put on televised election debate

Debate Mate are working with Sky to hold three televised student debates on the big issues of the election, that will mirror the televised Leaders' Debates.


You can follow the first debate and have your say live from 11am on twitter 

or on the Skynews site or you can watch the highlights on sky news on Thursday.

They will be debating "Is Britain Broken?"

Update on the benchmark

You can see the speech and read the text in full on the BBC site

My initial gut response was a bit flat. Reading the speech later it certainly reads a lot better than it was delivered. But then there may be a few reasons for that. I think it didn't make good use of his natural speaking style and flow. At times he seemed to be getting into a stride and then he had to change direction and tone suddenly.

Also I wonder if the sheer size of the crowd and bank of cameras in front of him was a little off putting. It certainly seems to have gotten to the chief justice and he only had to say 35 words. That might also have thrown Obama a little as his great moment of triumph (the swearing in) was not picture perfect for the ages. As a result the correct swearing in had to happen in a small room a day later with no crowd or TV coverage. If I was in his position I would have been hopping mad deep down inside. Lucky for the Chief Justice there aren't any more possible promotions.

Finally I think the message and tone of the speech was one of hard work to come. A speech in the style of his victory speech may not have conveyed the idea that he is now getting down to work. On balance it sent out the message he wanted and hasn't dominated the news cycle since allowing space for coverage of his first actions rather than first speech.

Did it set a benchmark in the public mind that all debaters will be judged against? Well hopefully it will remind people that both matter and manner are critical to a successful speech and shifting the emphasis from one to the other can be key to setting the tone and message.

Setting the benchmark

Tomorrow in Washington Barak Obama will make a speech that may become the most watched speech in history. It isn’t a debate as there won’t be a reply speech, unless you are watching it on Fox news then you never know. However it will be the only speech most people will see this year and could therefore set a benchmark on good speeches in the public mind and, unfortunately, in the mind of next year's in-take of first year debaters.

For such a critical speech its long term success is normally gauged not by it's specific details (as would be more the case in Debating) but by its ability to address the wider challenges of the time. John F. Kennedy’s and Franklin Roosevelt's speeches were both written at a cross roads in American, and World history. Yet interestingly both are probably remembered for 10 or so words. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” and Roosevelt’s “only thing we have to fear is fear itself” have entered into the popular imagination yet beyond those 5 seconds little is remembered from the speech.

Obama has a reputation for good speeches and rhetoric. Because of this public expectation will be very high (certainly far higher than the mark Bush had to reach 8 years ago). Personally I’m not sure that Obama gave a really good speech between his convention speech in 2004 and the acceptance speech at the 2008 convention speech. Over the course of the election he gave a number of good speeches culminating with the election night victory speech which I felt was his best so far. Whoever wrote that speech (presidents and presidential candidates rarely write their own speeches) knew the right balance between imagery (“huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world”) message (“We may not get there in one year or even in one term”) and sound bites (“at this defining moment change has come to America” and “our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared”).

Obama has also made much of the link between this moment and other historical figures also known for their oratory. His speech tomorrow will be compared not only with Kennedy and Roosevelt but with the likes of Martin Luther King (e.g. “I have a dream”) and Abraham Lincon (Gettysburg). If he follows the pattern of the victory speech it is likely that he may refer to all four of these historical figures either directly or by weaving elements of their speeches into his speech. Given the emphasis in recent days on celebrating the memory of Martin Luther King I expect we will hear “a dream” and “promised land” in prominent positions in the speech.

If you want to see transcripts of past presidential speeches then visit. http://www.bartleby.com/124/ . If you are really bored and looking for something to do why not play reference bingo. Listen to the speech and look out for direct or indirect references to speeches made by Kennedy, Lincon, Roosevelt and King. Triple points if anyone finds a reference to a speech made by Bush…..

Third US presidential debate tonight

OK it's not university debating, and some people may say its not debating at all, but possibly the most watched "debates" around the world are the debates that occur every 4 years between the candidates for the US presidency.

The third and final "debate" in the US presidential election takes place tonight at Hofstra University. It will focus on domestic and economic policy. The candidates will be seated at a table rather than standing at a podium. The debate will be made up of nine, nine-minute segments where each candidate will speak for two minutes to speak and then they will "debate" for five minutes.

The Moderator is Bob Schieffer.

Some useful sites for more background on US presidential debate
http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.mydebates.org
http://www.Debatescoop.org
http://www.debates.org

Second US presidential debate tonight

OK it's not university debating, and some people may say its not debating at all, but possibly the most watched "debates" around the world are those which occur every 4 years between the candidates for the US presidency.

The second presidential debate is on tonight at Belmont University. It is a "town hall" style "debate" where questions will come from the audience and on-line viewers. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond to each question.

The moderator is Tom Brokaw and as the name calling has started in the past couple of days he might have a tough job (probably not but you can hope).

The third and final debate is on the 15th October.

Some useful sites for more background on US presidential debate
http://electiondebates.wordpress.com
http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.mydebates.org/
http://www.debatescoop.org/
http://www.debates.org/

First US Presidential Debate tonight, maybe

OK it's not university debating, and some people may say its not debating at all, but possibly the most watched "debates" around the world are the debates that occur every 4 years between the candidates for the US presidency. It is likely that there will be at least highlights if not live coverage somewhere on your TV over the weekend. While there have been some memorable moments in past presidential debates there is some disagreement on the importance of the debates

The first debate is supposed to occur tonight at the University of Mississippi but this is in doubt as both the candidates are in Washington pretending to be playing an important part in rescuing the world economy but in reality are chasing the TV camera crews that moved from filming them endlessly shaking hands with ordinary voters to go report some real news.

If the debate happens it is supposed focus on foreign policy and national security but given the current economic crisis don't expect the candidates to stick to that (assuming they turn up). The candidates will stand at podiums and the debate will be made up of nine, nine-minute segments where each candidate will speak for two minutes to speak and then they will "debate" for five minutes.

The moderator is Jim Lehrer.

The second and third debates take place on the 7th October and the 15th October.

Some useful sites for more background on US presidential debate http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.mydebates.org/
http://www.debatescoop.org/
http://www.debates.org/