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This Handbook is the first major work to comprehensively map state-of-the-art scholarship on electoral debates in comparative perspective. Leading scholars and practitioners from around the world introduce a core theoretical and conceptual framework to understand this phenomenon and point to promising directions for new research on the evolution of electoral debates and the practical considerations that different country-level experiences can offer. Three indicators to help analyse electoral debates inform this Handbook: the level of experience of each country in the realisation of electoral debates; geopolitical characteristics linked to political influence; and democratic stability and electoral competitiveness. Chapters with examples from the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania add richness to the volume. Each chapter: Traces local historical, constitutive relationships between traditional forms of electoral debates and contexts of their emergence; Compares and critiques different perspectives regarding the function of debates on democracy; Probes, discusses, and evaluates recent and emergent theoretical resources related to campaign debates in light of a particular local experience; Explores and assesses new or neglected local approaches to electoral debates in a changing media landscape where television is no longer the dominant form of political communication; Provides a prospective analysis regarding the future challengers for electoral debates. Routledge International Handbook on Electoral Debates will set the agenda for scholarship on the political communication for years to come.

Este artículo tiene el objetivo de analizar las inexactitudes, mentiras y visiones parciales de la realidad de los debates en formato “cara a cara” en la actual democracia española. Los líderes políticos utilizan todos los medios que están a su disposición para lograr el objetivo de alcanzar las mayorías necesarias que les permitan gobernar, como la exposición de realidades parciales o el manejo intencionado de los tiempos y de la agenda política. Estas maniobras políticas, percibidas por los ciudadanos, pueden llegar tener repercusión negativa en los comicios, o quizá, si se incluyen otros conceptos, como el de fanatismo político o la desafección política, vinculado a la polarización, puede que tengan el efecto contrario y refuercen la posición de un electorado concreto.

Este artículo analiza el sentimiento de los mensajes publicados en la red social Twitter durante los debates de las elecciones de Galicia y País Vasco en el 2020. Se trata de comprobar si hay un sentimiento negativo dominante y si varía cuando interviene el candidato a la reelección —competición electoral—, si difiere cuando intervienen partidos de los extremos ideológicos —cámaras de eco— y si ante un tema que afecta a ambos electorados por igual se produce la misma reacción. Se demuestra que en el País Vasco importa más quién interviene —más competición electoral—, mientras que en Galicia son los temas los que motivan la conversación en Twitter.

Esta investigación hace un análisis de la historia, evolución, audiencias y agenda temática de los debates electorales televisados celebrados en España, comparándolos con los celebrados en Francia, Alemania y Reino Unido, con la intención de observar las posibles semejanzas y diferencias dentro del contexto audiovisual, político y normativo europeo. Se realiza un estudio cuantitativo y cualitativo de las audiencias, comparando los resultados a nivel nacional y autonómico con los programas más vistos de la televisión en los años de celebración de cada debate, además de analizar los bloques temáticos y agenda pública. Como conclusión, en el caso de España, la audiencia relativa de los debates televisados y, en el contexto europeo, la falta de uniformidad y armonización de formatos, debido tanto a la diversidad de los sistemas políticos y partidistas de cada país, como a la ausencia de normativas electorales específicas de los estados nacionales y de la propia Unión Europea. 

El presente trabajo, integrado en un proyecto investigador de mayor envergadura sobre el ataque descortés en el debate electoral, desarrolla el análisis de dos estrategias de descortesía que revelan un funcionamiento particularmente interesante en dichos eventos discursivos: el menosprecio y la burla hacia el adversario. Tomando como referencia el último debate cara a cara de máximo nivel celebrado en España hasta el momento, el que enfrentó a A. Pérez Rubalcaba y M. Rajoy en la campaña para las elecciones generales de 2011, se analiza el valor funcional de estas estrategias y los rasgos de las diversas variantes que presentan, así como los diferentes patrones lingüístico-discursivos en que toman forma. A ello se une su caracterización desde el punto de vista teórico de la descortesía lingüística. El trabajo, además, se contextualiza en el marco de la investigación en la que se integra, un análisis global del funcionamiento de la descortesía en el debate citado, en el que se aísla una nómina de estrategias de descortesía, se realiza un inventario de los mecanismos lingüístico-discursivos que se ponen en juego para su ejecución y se lleva a cabo una caracterización de los ataques desde el prisma teórico de la descortesía. This work, part of a larger research project about impolite attacks in electoral debates, develops the analysis of two strategies of impoliteness that prove to have a particularly interesting effect in these discursive events: scorn and mockery towards the opponent. Taking as a reference the last televised face to face top-level debate held in Spain so far, involving A. Pérez Rubalcaba and M. Rajoy in the campaign for general elections in 2011, we analyse: a) the functional value of these strategies and the features of their different variants, b) the linguistic-discursive patterns through which they are implemented, and c) their nature from the theoretical point of view of linguistic impoliteness. The work is also contextualized within the research framework to which it belongs, a comprehensive analysis of the use of impoliteness in the aforementioned debate. This analysis pinpoints a list of strategies of impoliteness, carries out an inventory of the linguistic-discursive mechanisms that come into play for their implementation and describes the characteristics of the attacks from the theoretical prism of impoliteness.

Electoral debates are a win-lose game in which the stakes for the political contenders are extremely high. The antagonistic nature of these encounters very frequently results in impoliteness or face aggravating moves with which the debaters aim to hurt the opponent’s positive or negative face. The aim of this research is to investigate the impoliteness strategies employed by politicians during electoral debates. positive-face and negative-face impoliteness strategies are taken as a starting point in the analysis at hand. The final electoral debate of the 2019 presidential elections in the Republic of North Macedonia is used as a data source for this research, which is based on several different hypotheses and is both qualitatively and quantitative oriented. The findings of the research are in line with the insights gained from previous studies, which, more or less, suggests that Macedonian politicians follow the mainstream “rules” when it comes to using impoliteness in political debates.

Introduction: The impact of the two debates for the Spanish national elections in April 2019 has been analyzed. They were broadcasted on RTVE and Atresmedia on April 22nd and 23rd respectively. Methods: A telephone survey was conducted in Madrid, Barcelona, A Coruña and Vigo. Out of 8000 calls, 734 complete answers about the debates broadcasted on those dates were obtained. Results: 52% of the respondents have watched one debate and from them 28% have consulted further information. From this last group, 21% have used social networks, but fewer than half have actively participated (43.2%). Discussion and conclusions: There is an age and gender gap in the consumption of information about the televised debates through social networks as well as in their use of each of them. Internet users prefer these networks to obtain information but they do not participate and do not give any credibility to the data offered during the debates. The topics drawing more interest are the same for the users of social networks and those of traditional media.

Within the growing academic interest over electoral debates, the role of the journalists who conduct the debates in determining the tenor of the answers has not been sufficiently studied. We used Chile as an extreme case, given the predominant role that the debate moderators receive here, thanks to the “journalistic panel” format utilized in them, where they take turns to interview the candidates. As a framework to describe these contents, we used Functional Theory of Political Discourse by William Benoit. Our data show that, indeed, the candidates use different combinations of said functions, depending on the different frameworks established by the rules for each debate. Clearly, the candidates tend to defend themselves from the attacks of the journalists, rather than their rivals’; and they use other strategies when the rules allow them more freedom.

Introduction: This paper analyses the effects of the electoral debates on citizens' perceptions about the candidates and on the vote for the main parties in the General Elections of April 2019. Methodology: Descriptive analysis and generalized linear models with link logit to explain the vote, through the use of the Post-Election Study No. 3248 of the General Elections, 2019 prepared by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS by its acronym in Spanish). Results: The models show that the perception about which candidate was the most convincing in the electoral debates significantly influences the vote. Discussion and conclusions: Electoral debates have mainly a reinforcing effect on both the vote and the leadership of the participants in these.

The present study explores the language of evaluation in a sub-genre of political discourse, pre-electoral debates, and its potential persuasive function for gaining voters via a contraposition of positive self-evaluation and negative evaluation of the other candidate. A further aim of this research is to check whether the candidate's ideology has a bearing on the entities that get evaluated. After a brief examination of the characteristics of the sub-genre at hand, specifically in the Spanish context, we present the results of an evaluation analysis carried out in a corpus of 19,849 words, which is the extension of the most recent pre-electoral debate held in Spain between the candidates of the two main political parties. Taking into account Van Dijk's critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework for parliamentary debates as global semantic strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, Martin and White's method was adopted as an analytical tool. The results showed that, although each candidate had different preferences in the choice of evaluative devices, they both used them as a strategy to win electoral votes while deprecating the opposing party and, therefore, minimizing their opponents' chances of winning the elections. On the other hand, and despite their opposing ideology, they both seem to defend those policies that are more widely accepted in order not to risk losing voters: public services and egalitarian social policies.