Kamala Harris was, to my mind, a clear winner of the first debate between herself and Donald Trump. As things stand, however, I reckon that Trump must be still regarded as the favourite to win a majority of the state electoral college votes, and thus become the next president. I hope I am wrong, but on the evidence as I see it, including regular tasting of a fair sample of American perspectives, this is an election still capable of serious surprises.

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This is not as I would prefer it, but a good many people eager to see their prejudices satisfied are operating with tunnel vision or confirmation bias. They interpret every piece of news that is good from Kamala Harris's point of view as a sign that America has come to its senses. They see every fresh verbal atrocity, or outrageous statement by Trump as a sure sign that everyone is now laughing at him, and that his power and pretensions have been exploded. By and large the Australian media is playing it straight, which is to say giving the market what it wants. It is by no means certain that Australians are being told what they need.

Debates, and advertising, and sometimes even rallies, can be very important in presidential elections. They can persuade voters to change sides. They can persuade people initially uninclined to vote to go to the polling booth on election day feeling that supporting their chosen candidate will make a difference. (After a lacklustre debate, of course, the number of voters who decide not to bother can increase - perhaps because no candidate is thought worthy a trip down to the polling booth, getting the business from officials and undergoing the pet eating test.)

But most of those likely to vote have long made up their minds and are unlikely to change them based on the opinion of commentators about who was the more impressive performer at a fairly artificial set piece debate. One or both of the debaters may have come up with a memorable line, and one or the other, or both, may have been less impressive in dealing with a campaign issue. But all Americans have been hearing ceaseless ads in all media about the candidates for more than six months. They know both the best things that can be said about the people they are inclined to favour, and absolutely the worst about them as well.

The importance of rallies and advertising, and debates on television is in influencing the minds of those who want to vote but have not decided whom they favour, or, more importantly, need persuasion about wanting to vote, and about who they want. The electorate is full of people who don't care who wins, figuring that it will not make much difference to their lives. Indeed, just the sort of people who need to be nudged hard to go vote are least likely to watch a television debate.

It also contains people who need to be reminded that they have a stake in the outcome, one that will affect their future. Thus, Democrats are warning interest groups and the general working class that the Republicans, if taken at their word, mean to seriously reduce federal spending on health care, education and the social security system. Republicans are warning that voting Democrat means higher taxes for almost everyone in the top 40 per cent of income levels.

The Republican Party is, at the moment, very much the party of the candidate, and he is pitching himself both as the leader for the working man (much less so the working woman), and the candidate of old-fashioned conservative moral values, of the sort he so richly encapsulates. He is a natural polariser, who campaigns rather more against things (immigrants, the sneers of liberals and insiders in politics) and is less attached to specific detailed........

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