Presidential Debates, Partisan Motivations, and Political Interest

How does the public evaluate candidates in presidential debates? Previous literature often points to attitude reinforcement, but much of this research ignores heterogeneous effects between individuals. This article builds upon research on debate evaluations and motivated reasoning to isolate which individuals—beyond basic partisan differences—are affected by presidential debates. Like prior work, I find partisan reinforcement effects, but more importantly, I show that these effects are heterogeneous based on political interest (a dynamic never before shown in this context). The most interested individuals are the most likely to demonstrate reinforcement effects. These findings have critical implications for communication effects, opinion formation, presidential campaigns, and polarization.