Presidential candidates are getting a bad rap — they may seem evasive, but they don’t always dodge hard-hitting debate questions, a new study claims.
Candidates accused by their opponents of avoiding questions only actually did so 35 percent of the time, according to researchers, who reviewed 14 presidential debate transcripts between 1996 and 2012.
People are prone to think candidates are evasive because of our psychological tendency to believe what we’re told by members of our own political parties, according to study author David Clementson of Ohio State University.
“When Americans continually hear the political candidates they support saying that their opponents are dodging the question, they probably have a tendency to believe them,” Clementson said.
The study, published in the June 2016 issue of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, found Democratic candidates accused Republicans of evading questions in debates 26 times.
Republicans accused Democrats of it 25 times in the time period.
For the study, Clementson analyzed how many times candidates actually discussed off-topic issues after being asked a question at a debate.