I’m pretty sure Romney has the edge in debate experience, but I’d love to hear the exact numbers.
Romney’s certainly been in more debates recently, but Obama was in quite a few in 2008, and before that in several as an Illinois Senate, U.S. House and U.S. Senate candidate.
Romney MIGHT have the edge, considering that there were about an umptillion GOP primary debates this year. But then, consider who his opponents were…
Yeah I really wish I could find the exact numbers for some of those smaller races they were in. I figure Romney has more just because the longest debate cycles are presidential primaries and Romney has had two long ones to Obama’s one. I know there were 20 Republican debates this cycle alone.
You might be interested in the recent article on the subject by James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly.
According to this Wikipedia list, Romney participated in 17 out of 21 debates in the 2008 Republican primary. According to this Wikipedia list, Obama participated in 25 out of 26 debates in the 2008 Democratic primary. In addition, he participated in three debates against John McCain for the general election. Finally, according to this Wikipedia list, Romney participated in 19 debates during the 2012 Republican primaries.
So if we restrict our attention to within the last 5 years, the final score is Romney 36, Obama 28.
Thanks for that article - very interesting!
The most surprising thing about this, to me, is that there were 26 debates in the '08 Democratic primary. I thought the Republicans had gone gonzo this past year, but apparently their 21 debates are about par.
As the other replies have demonstrated, Romney has the edge if you define “edge” in terms of sheer volume. However, keep in mind that Obama went up against candidates such as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, among others, while Romney merely managed to out debate opponents such as Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, etc. in 2012, but was trounced in 2008 by the much more credible John McCain. I’m aware that this is GQ, and I sincerely don’t mean this as a political jab, but even most Republicans that I know would probably admit that Obama at least has the edge in terms of quality, if not quantity.
I believe Obama was on a debate team in law school. So if you count those, not just debates as a candidate, he probably has been in more.
Romney also had a debate early in his electoral career in his run for the Senate vs. Ted Kennedy, which even if he lost the race, must have been quite some test.
The C-Span archive has footage of 4 debates for Romney from the Governor’s race and two from the Senate race. They also have 3 debates for Obama from his Senate race.
Obama ran unopposed in the primaries of his state senate races and it was an overwhelmingly Democrat district so it is unlikely he participated in any debates during those campaigns. There is footage of one debate during his congressional run online and I read a description of a radio debate.