Mediated campaign debate subgenre and their importance for analytic considerations

Mediated political debates are among the most widely followed campaign events in the United States, with the bulk of research focusing on presidential and vice-presidential races. A comparison of these debates to those for gubernatorial executive offices proves useful. Non-presidential debates assist in finding greater diversity in party ideology, gender and ethnic identity, and a larger number of candidates in a single debate. Moreover, non-presidential debates exhibit more diverse debate structures given the greater frequency of their occurrence and their design by a wider group of organisations and individuals. Variation in the debate structure and in the number of candidates leads to a differing picture of speaking opportunities and strategies for expressing stance and types of alignment with others.