Debating between political candidates is normal at election times. What is unusual, though, is that the candidates are assessed and given scores in real time by the public… at least until now.
Recently, on the occasion of the presidential elections in Mexico and the elections for governor in the State of Jalisco, the Grupo Reforma, which publishes the newspapers Mural, in Guadalajara, El Norte, in Monterrey, and Reforma, in Mexico D.F., arranged for the audience to give scores to the political candidates.
This was possible thanks to PowerVote’s interactive audience polling systems, which allowed the audience to give scores to each candidate’s performance. Scores were from 1-10, 1 for an unconvincing performance and 10 for a very convincing one.
Scoring was conducted in three phases. Before the debate, the audience answered a questionnaire in which they stated who they were going to vote for. Afterwards, they gave scores on the performance of each of the candidates in real time. And, lastly, they answered another questionnaire in which they assessed the general performance of each candidate during the election campaign.
Both the debate between the candidates for the Presidency of the Republic and for the Governorship of the State of Jalisco, the audience convened by the Grupo Reforma – 518 in the first case, and 119 in the second – used PowerVote’s keypads to assess the initial message and the conclusions of the candidates, in addition to the different aspects of their political programmes related to economy, culture, justice, etc. The candidates were given three minutes to explain and defend their position, followed a round of voting by the audience. During the debate between the candidates for president, simultaneous voting took place in Mexico D.F., Guadalajara and Monterrey.
