Debate viewers take part in political science testing

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 14, 2008 - Page: 5A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Sunday night’s debate between Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and Republican challenger John Kennedy was a mini-political laboratory.

Ten of the debate viewers participated in a test aimed at gauging individuals’ response to what the candidates said during the hour-long forum.

Presiding over the experiment was LSU professor of mass communication and political science Kirby Goidel.

From initial findings, Goidel said anticipated “partisan” differences showed up among the Landrieu and Kennedy participants.

“Anytime there was an attack the independents seemed to go down. Independents didn’t seem to like the partisan stuff,” Goidel said.

He said the undecided audience members reacted more positively when candidates talked about “problem-solving and bipartisan-type efforts.”

Participants held devices called “perception analyzers,” which were hooked up to a laptop or wireless computer. They allow people to individually rate the performance of candidates via the turn of a dial that registers from zero to 100.

The analyzers record, in real-time, responses of the people holding them.

“They are like focus groups with immediate, instantaneous gratification,” Goidel said.

“You track individual response to a debate just like they do on CNN,” he said.

A big difference though is that CNN uses Gallop to scientifically choose its participants, Goidel said.

Sunday night at LSU, Goidel said he asked 10 people who showed up for the Senate debate to participate. There were two each leaning toward Democrat Landrieu and Republican Kennedy and the other six said they had not made up their minds, he said.

On Monday, Goidel and Louisiana Public Broadcasting officials were trying to align the data-charting reaction with the video of the forum. He said the idea is for people to be able to sees the ups and downs of the audience response to Kennedy and Landrieu on a subsequent rebroadcast of the program.