Voters swayed by interactive ’worm’ graph during election debate

Research calls into question people's ability to form their own judgements about their preferred election candidate after finding voters could be heavily swayed by 'the worm'. 'The worm' is a continuous response tracking measure that is increasingly being used in live election debates around the world. The University of Bristol and Royal Holloway, University of London study, entitled 'Social influence in televised election debates: a potential distortion of democracy? is published in the journal PLoS One . Televised election debates were introduced in the United States in 1960, and now play a prominent role in the election campaigns of many countries. The United Kingdom held its first televised election debates between the leaders of the main parliamentary parties in 2010. To help viewers evaluate voter response to the issues discussed in the debates, broadcasters including ITV and the BBC made use of a sampling methodology often referred to as 'the worm'; a similar methodology has been used by CNN in the United States and by broadcasters in Australia and New Zealand. Unlike the sample sizes of hundreds or thousands of voters that are standard in political polls, the worm is based on a very small sample of undecided voters (sometimes as few as 12).