Yeah, that's a good point as well. If they're undecided at this point in the race, chances are they don't give enough of a **** to vote for who they really believe in.

Voting decisions (for the most part) are made based on basic ideology and information. Information can come from a number of sources. The politicians themselves, their peers, news outlets, online research, etc. If a person is a long time subscriber to the XXXXX Tribune and for the most part is in line with their past editorials, why shouldn't they be somewhat influenced by the paper laying out in detail why they are choosing one candidate over the other?

If you are on the fence it can take very little to make you fall off.

My point is that being on the fence is what makes you a dumbass to begin with. Then there's the issue of journalistic sources not only picking sides but announcing them, but that's a whole different can of worms.

A lot of people will not make up their minds until after the last debate. Whether you believe debates matter or not doesn't count. For some people *raises hand* they do.

It's always good to see the two people one on one and how they handle being backed into corners.

How realistic is that for a presidency though? How often does someone barge into the oval office saying "the price of steel is declining, what are you going to do about NOW"?

Modern presidential debates are simply modeled around getting soundbytes for gotcha journalism.

Imagine you've been a republican your whole life. Your gut says to go GOP again, but this guy Trump has you worried. Only makes sense to soak in as much as you can before making the final call.

This qualifies for the short bus too.

I like seeing their temperament in those situations. Don't really care as much for their actual answers. In the 2 debates so far one person has held it together a LOT better than the other. If a candidate can get riled up and unhinged during a debate you have to imagine how they'd react to an actual crisis.

And just so we're clear, Trump was the unhinged one because the news said so, right?

Why?

If you are pro life, pro gun, pro bible, anti big government you vote GOP.

If you are pro choice, pro separation of church and state, pro taxing the rich you vote Democrat.