All quotes below were taken from the Los Angeles Times’ excellent transcription:
LA Times Town Hall Transcripts
Many Presidential debates offer heated exchanges, but Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spent nearly the first third of Sunday’s Town Hall meeting engaged in some of the most pointed attacks in memory. Despite the Town Hall format, the candidates spent very little time engaging with the assembled voters in the audience, preferring instead to use their time to attack each other relentlessly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CLm-WgGjs
The ugliness of the debate made it difficult to determine not only who “won” the exchanges, but also which issues were most important to voters. Because the debate was held shortly after the release of a controversial recording of Donald Trump describing his coworker in lewd, aggressive terms, many of the early questions focused on what moderator Anderson Cooper called a description of “sexual assault,” an accusation Trump dismissed as mere “locker room talk.” But, was Trump winning anyone over, or was this more evidence that, as Clinton said, Trump is “not fit to be President and Commander-in-Chief?”
Enter UNU, the Swarm Intelligence platform that reveals unprecedented insights into group sentiment. A passionate group from the UNU Community watched Sunday’s Town Hall together in real-time, discussing the debate, the candidates, and the state of the nation long after the candidates had left the stage. Their questions – and the Swarm’s answers – offer a unique window into the mindset of the American electorate. On Trump’s 2005 comments, the Swarm made its belief quite clear:
Donald Trump also defended his comments as being minor compared to Bill Clinton’s “far worse” behavior. Trump went on to blame Hillary Clinton for enabling her husband, and tried to make that a central issue on the night. He even went so far as to hold a pre-debate press conference with four women who have accused the former President of inappropriate conduct. And yet, when someone asked the Swarm about this issue’s relevancy to the current campaign, the Swarm refused to conflate Bill Clinton’s past with Hillary’s campaign for President.
After a particularly rough two weeks for Donald Trump, many GOP leaders have abandoned their support of his campaign in order to focus their efforts on other elections lower on the ticket. But, the Swarm believed that Trump’s flailing campaign could impact more than just the race for President.
This wavering belief in the continued GOP majority in Congress was reflected in another question directed at the Swarm concerning Trump’s oft-mentioned wall between the United States and Mexico. But, even if the Republicans do hold onto their Congressional majority, the Swarm believes that Congress won’t support Trump’s controversial wall.
At the same time, Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, performed quite well in the Vice Presidential debate with Tim Kaine, prompting many to wonder whether or not the right man was at the top of the ticket. This question came up in UNU, as well, although it’s doubtful that The Donald would step down in favor of the man he “hasn’t spoken to and doesn’t agree with.”
Fortunately, the debate eventually moved on to healthcare. Clinton defended Obamacare’s expanded coverage, but wanted to “fix” its high costs. Trump responded that “Obamacare is a disaster. You know it, we all know it,” and warned that Hillary Clinton would seek to ” go single payer, which means the government basically rules everything.” But when the Swarm was asked what should be done with healthcare in the US the Free Market received strong initial support, but consensus was quickly reached around Universal Healthcare.
In fact, as you can see from this graph, Universal Healthcare and Free Market have nearly identical levels of support at the beginning of the question. But, over time, as the group converges on the answer that maximizes the total satisfaction of all participants, Universal Healthcare easily pulls away. This suggests that Universal Healthcare is the most acceptable solution to the highest number of people, even if it’s not everyone’s first choice. This is an important distinction, because support for Universal Healthcare grew steadily over time, where the Free Market solution did not build on its initially equally support and, ultimately lost support.
A young Muslim woman then asked both candidates how they would help “people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to this country?” Unfortunately for the young women, neither candidate directly answered her question, and the debate devolved into a discussion of Islamophobia. Trump noted that Muslims must be required to “report” suspicious activity, and that neither Obama nor Clinton can solve the problem because they refuse to say the words, “Radical Islamic terrorism.” Clinton, for her part, did use the term “violent jihadist terrorists” and said that Trump’s rhetoric did more harm than good, a position the Swarm seemed to endorse.
With that in mind, the Swarm was asked to rate Trump’s ability to deal with ISIS. This should be a strength for Donald Trump, who used every opportunity to blame Clinton for creating ISIS and to assert his own unique – and secret – plan for defeating them. In fact, when asked about the 2005 recording early in the debate, Trump immediately pivoted the conversation to the terrorist group, “but it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.” So, does the Swarm trust Trump to dismantle ISIS?
This is a particularly important point, because, the Swarm also seems to believe that ISIS / Terrorism are the biggest foreign threats to the United States. You can see the replay of that question being asked HERE, but the graph below tells the whole story.
Despite all of the analysis and discussion they generate, two questions loom large at the end of a Presidential debate. The first is, naturally, which candidate won the debate? Of course they don’t keep score in Presidential debates, and both candidates will lay claim to victory, and their supporters will agree with them. So, here again it makes sense to turn to the Swarm to reveal how this group of voters scored the debate.
It’s one thing to win a debate, quite another to win the Presidency. That’s why the second, but far more important, post-debate question is who will win the election? Like most things in this chaotic 2016 campaign, this question was filtered through a Trump perspective, so, instead of asking an either/or question between Clinton and Trump, the Swarm was asked only to rank Trump’s chances of winning the presidency.
We don’t have a prediction for the election here at Unanimous AI. But, we do know this…
Watching the campaign together, in real-time, is transforming the political process for us. Instead of having the debate on in the background while we cooked dinner, pausing only to mutter our disgust at one answer or another, we shared the experience with people across the country, even the world. We debated the issues in the same moment that the candidates did, and we made our voices heard civilly. And when it was over, even if we didn’t agree with the Swarm on every issue, we felt like we knew each other a little better. I’m not sure you can say the same for the two candidates.
We’ll be swarming the third and final debate in UNU on October 19th. We’d love to have you join us for that, or any other live-streaming event. Let’s have some fun together.
If you want to try UNU, click HERE. It’s fun, free, and totally anonymous…
