Real-time debate reactions show Democrats more ‘fired up’ than Republicans

The "enthusiasm gap" showed up in a test of involuntary physiological responses among viewers of last Tuesday's presidential debate.

Preliminary results of a real-time test of voters showed that involuntary responses of Democrat participants to the presidential debate were stronger than those of Republicans. Those findings were supported by a post-debate survey in which Democrat participants indicated they were more likely to donate to support Kamala Harris than the Republicans to Donald Trump.

A research team led by Paul Bolls and Yen-I Lee from Washington State University's Murrow College of Communication conducted media psychophysiology tests on a sample of 31 voters-18 Democrats and 13 Republicans-while they watched the debate from a monitored location on the WSU Pullman campus. They all wore a ring-like sensor, developed by Biopac Systems, which detects sweat gland activity, an involuntary nervous system reaction.

"The sympathetic arousal data indicates that at this raw, less conscious, visceral level, Democrats appear to be perceiving Trump as a threat," said Bolls. "That's not so much the case in terms of Republicans' perception of Harris."

The sensors provide a physiological indicator of activation, or "how fired up" a person becomes, Bolls explained. A high level of physiological response on the ring sensor is a rating that exceeds 1.0, and Democrats reached that level in relation to both Trump and Harris. The Republicans response meanwhile only reached 0.83 for their candidate and for Harris at 0.59. While the sensors cannot reveal if the response is positive or negative, the participants questionnaire answers showed that they were likely activated positively for their candidate and negatively for the opposing candidate.

The surveys also revealed a hint of change post-debate. Republican attitudes toward the candidates were slightly more mixed than Democrats. The Harris supporters felt only more positively about their candidate afterwards. They also felt more strongly that she had won the debate. Republicans still felt Trump had won but were less strong in that belief.

It's no surprise that the debate didn't change any minds, Bolls said. Research has shown that they rarely do. What Bolls and Lee are more interested in investigating is how psychological processes like emotional regulation influence people's politics. "What's going on at this deeper cognitive and emotional level, I think has more implications for democracy and how we talk with each other than debates," he said. "If we can gain some valid scientific insight into emotional responses to a variety of political content and interactions, there may be a way to figure out how to practically inform how the media covers and presents politics as well as how we respond to it."

Media Contacts

• Paul Bolls, WSU Murrow College of Communication, 509-335-6149, [email protected]
• Sara Zaske, WSU News & Media Relations, 509-335-4846, [email protected]