Public opinion on the importance of political debates / Ervina Philip and Siti Zurainah Ramlee

Nowadays, a political debate is not a new political issue to be discussed since it had been popularized a long time ago especially in the western countries such as the American Presidential Debates. Besides that, there are growing body of literature that discusses on the importance of political debate itself which focuses more on what are the benefits or result for practicing such event especially during the General Election campaign. This paper provides empirical evidence on the correlation between different groups of people and their opinion on the importance of political debates. By using the triangular design approach, the group of people have been divided into three categories namely the civil servants, civil movements, and the local politicians. A questionnaire was prepared and 112 respondents from 5 government organizations and 5 civil movement were participated in this study. Besides that, the opinion of four local politicians was collected for the purpose of this study. The results of the analysis indicate that the relationship between the public groups and their opinion on the importance of political debate is somewhat high. It shows that more respondents gave positive feedback on the importance of a political debate itself.

Keywords: Public Opinion, Political Debates, Importance