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This is American History TV's Lectures in History podcast.

This week, University of Utah political science professor David Bueller teaches a class about presidential debates and their influence on voters.

Okay.

We're going to start today by talking about candidate debates.

And that is like my favorite thing about a campaign,

whether I was on campaign staff or a candidate. So I'm really excited to talk about this today.

All right. Well, I'm going to give you a little bit of history here. So presidential and vice presidential general election debates have become really a highlight of the campaign season. It's something we just expect to happen. That has not always been the case.

It's also common in other races, particularly high profile races.

So when was the first presidential debate? Here's a trivia question, historical trivia.

Anyone know? Give you a hint? No one recognizes those people?

All right, that's a false hint. That's Lincoln and Douglas.

A lot of times people think, is here of the famous Lincoln Douglas debates, and they

ran against each other for president in 1860.

Actually, their debates were when they were both running for the US Senate in Illinois in 1858

and had numerous debates around the state of Illinois.

And so kind of an odd situation, right?

They ran against each other for US Senate.

Douglas was elected by the legislature at that time.

The legislatures appointed them, the senators. And then two years later, they're on the major party tickets against each other.

But their debates in 1858 were published and circulated a lot in 1816.

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