Lipscomb’s political science department hosted another “Pizza and Politics” presidential debate watch party in Swang 110 on Wednesday evening for the last presidential debate before the election.
Senior mechanical engineering and mathematics major, William Sisson said the third and final presidential debate differed from the prior two as both candidates were less aggressive in their attacks.
“What you get is you have Trump being pushed less and less to be bombastic and to make himself look bad, and so I know there was a lot of criticism in the last debate about them being too antagonistic towards each other,” Sisson said. “I think Hillary backed off a little bit on that, and the result is that it ended up making Trump look a little bit better which is interesting.”
Sophomore psychology major Jacqueline Herrera originally supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I – Vt.) in the primaries, but shifted her support to who she felt represented her best on the issues when Sanders did not become the Democratic nominee.
“I also looked at third parties and who was more inline to the side of the issues that I am passionate about, and overwhelmingly they all coincided or correlated with Hillary Clinton.” Herrera said. “Things like LGBT rights, immigration rights and things like that.”
With early voting in Tennessee opening on October 19 and lasting until November 3rd, the votes are already rolling in.
Many students are voting in their first presidential election, some students find themselves torn between both major party candidates and some are unwilling to vote for either. For history major Patrick Russell, choosing a candidates in this election reflects a deeper decision that he feels is important for Lipscomb students to make.
“Think about your Muslim brothers and sisters, Buddhists and people of other religions. Think about how both of those candidates are going to react to those people,” Russell said. “Going to a Christian university, it’s really important that we preach love and compassion, and I think that truly preaching that, you need to have a presidential candidate that believes in love and compassion and doesn’t believe in bigotry.”
Sisson thinks students on campus generally tend to side with Trump on the issues based on what he has seen and heard attending all three debate watch parties, but other students that may not have gone to those events might disagree.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast, Trump has a 93.6% chance of winning Tennessee, but Clinton’s odds at winning overall are at 87.4%.
“From the debate watch parties, I’ve noticed a lot of support for Trump and applause whenever he says something that they like; however, a lot of the people that I’ve talked to that haven’t come to these debates have shown a lot of interest in Gary Johnson or Hillary Clinton,” Sisson said.
While the cheers for Trump Sisson mentioned were only signs of support for some, to others they were signs of disrespect. Senior marketing major Libby Harvey said she is disappointed in the students who were not taking their decisions seriously.
“For the conduct that happened in the room here, there was a lot of laughing, and I just want to encourage all students to be very serious when thinking about this vote and making their decision.” Harvey said. “I know that the mediator on TV said a couple times to the audience there to be quiet because there is a lot of laughter and a lot of comments, and I think it showed a lot of disrespect to the debate and the process of it.”
As an undecided voter herself, Harvey also encouraged students to consider all their options.
“I want to remind people to be respectful and also that they can write in their own vote. If they’re not for not or the other [candidates], or if they think something one of them says is ridiculous to just remember that they have the power to vote for whoever they want to.”
For the state of Tennessee, write-in candidates must have their name registered through the state election commission before election day in order for the votes they may receive to be counted. More information on registered write-in candidates can be found at the Secretary of State’s website: www.sos.tn.gov.