Everyone wants everyone else to debate. But does it really matter?

With less than a month out from the 2022 midterms, candidates are vying for the attention of voters with yard signs, television ads and meet-and-greets. In spite of the seemingly constant barrage of election-related content, there’s one format some say is missing: a debate.

Both political parties have candidates who chastise and are chastised over debates. Two local news outlets say they reached out to NC-13 candidates for a debate: Democrat Wiley Nickel’s campaign was willing to do it; Republican Bo Hines’s campaign was not. In other instances, candidates have been challenging their opponents directly. In NC-04, Republican Courtney Geels tried to set up a debate with her opponent, Democrat state senator Valerie Foushee, who declined. In the 36th NC House district, Republican John Harris says his campaign was not able to set up a debate with the incumbent, Democrat Julie von Haefen. Even Democrat Cheri Beasley, who debated Republican Ted Budd last week on Spectrum News 1 in eastern and central North Carolina, said the Republican “refused to accept a debate available to all of North Carolina.”

But are debates really all that useful?

The televised debate is a fixture of American politics. High school students are taught about the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (where Nixon looked sickly) that contributed to Kennedy’s narrow victory that November. It’s possible that the effectiveness of televised debates has waned in recent years. It’s also possible they weren’t impactful to begin with.

According to a study performed by the Harvard Business School, debates this late in an election season tend to not affect voters picking one candidate over another. In fact, the study says, 72% of voters make up their minds about two months before an election, and they do not change their policy preferences based on televised debates.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Pew Research surveys going back to 1988 found that debates were “useful,” but not pivotal, for undecided voters. Another study by UNC-Chapel Hill professor James Stimson from 2012 found that televised debates have not had a significant impact on any election since their introduction. If anything, he says, these programs only provided “nudges” in close elections — like the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race.

Last week’s showdown between Beasley and Budd demonstrated the problems with a modern-day debate. Spectrum News 1 is exclusive to Spectrum customers and broadcast the debate on a Friday night a month out from the election. It was broadcast online for free, but some social media users ran into a login page that asked them for a username and password, which deterred them from watching. Most importantly, Budd v. Beasley wasn’t really a debate; it was two politicians with pristine, campaign-approved answers talking at each other and at viewers. While the moderator had good questions, the candidates either gave non-answers or reiterated information you could find on their campaign website, in a pamphlet or on Twitter.

So why do we still do televised debates? It seems that their only purpose is to entertain partisan voters and generate sound clips for attack ads, at least in their current form. Declining a debate becomes a symbol of incompetence, even if they aren’t a productive use of time. Debates hardly ever produce new information and are mostly newsworthy when an insult is lobbed or a fly lands on someone’s head. They’re happening less and less in Senate races, according to recent Brookings Institute data.

It’s not that televised debates are inherently bad; hearing how candidates interact with each other can be useful, like in primary elections. They could be more useful if they were mandatory for candidates, easy to access, or addressed issues that swayed undecided voters. If hosts were adamant about getting “yes” and “no,” or there was on-air fact-checking, maybe voters could get some real answers. It could be a useful tool if people weren’t so tied to their parties. Instead of using energy to create attack ads and rattle off talking points, maybe we should all focus our energy somewhere else.

Sara Pequeño is a member of the Editorial Board.