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POLITICS

Voters Say State Electoral Debates Are Important, But Don’t Change Their Mind

As the midterm election season enters the final stretch, most voters consider debates important to their vote and good indicators of where the candidates stand. But for the majority, a debate has never changed the way they ultimately decided to vote.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters think that, in terms of how they will vote, debates between candidates for statewide office are at least somewhat important, including 35% who consider them Very Important. Just 23% say such debates are not important to their vote, including six percent (6%) who say they’re Not At All Important. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 11-12, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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