Presidential debates funnier than popular sitcoms?

President Barack Obama appears to have tickled American funny bones more than presidential contender Mitt Romney during their public confrontations, according to researchers studying audience reactions to the US presidential and vice-presidential debates.

The researchers used non-invasive facial coding software to pick up the strength and frequency of positive viewer reactions to candidate remarks. They measured faint activation of the ‘smiling muscle’, or zygomaticus, as well as nerve signals in the skin through electro-dermal activity.

The research was headed by Professor Duane Varan, executive director of Audience Labs at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. Audience Labs was formerly Murchoch’s interactive television research institute.

Its website says its staff study the future of television and it lists 50 international and national ‘collaborators’ including the BBC, Sky, CBC, NBC, Danish Broadcasting and all of Australia’s TV stations, as well as Microsoft, Cisco and Warner Brothers.

The actual investigation of audience reactions to the debates was conducted at the Disney Media and Advertising Laboratory in Austin, Texas, where Varan concurrently serves as chief research officer.

Varan said the immense volume of data produced by the study would take months to analyse although the initial results showed who won the voters’ funny bones.

“The first Obama-Romney debate saw strong humour moments for both Democrats and Republicans but the foreign policy debate was lacking in humour with only two funny moments, both among Democrats,” he said.

“However, the second debate [the Town Hall Debate] definitely went to President Obama who was funnier to Democrats than Mr Romney was to Republicans. Paul Ryan trumped Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate even though Biden benefited from the strongest pivot with his comment to Ryan ‘Now you’re Jack Kennedy’.”

Varan said the quip that got the biggest laugh across all four debates occurred during the second presidential debate when Obama claimed the size of his pension was not as large as Romney’s.

He was particularly surprised by one aspect of the results: “While shorter in duration, the intensity of the humour in the debates was greater than we’ve seen with similar research on popular sitcoms. I’m not saying you’ll see Mitt Romney or Barack Obama on The Big Bang Theory after Tuesday but it does indicate the level of tension in the debates that suddenly gets released.”

Given the role humour played in positioning candidates as personable and likeable during the election, the new technology could be a valuable resource to strategists and commentators, Varan said.

Research was under way to measure emotions such as surprise, anger and confusion in future.