Political trust is decreasing in modern societies. To generate political trust, voters need to gain confidence in political actors. This is especially true in the context of election campaigns, because citizens trust and finally vote for candidates which they believe to be the best politician, in terms of competence to solve pressing political issues. Mentioning the “right issues” and solutions to problems relevant to voters increase their trust in politicians. Thus, TV debates – reaching millions of people – have the potential to generate trust. This paper analyses whether candidates of German TV debates in 2002, 2009 and 2013 take advantage of their opportunity to reach voters’ trust. We use experimental data to measure voters’ trust in candidates (pretest-posttest-design) and to identify their relevant issues. We then match this data with content analyses of the debates in order to investigate whether TV debates have the potential to increase political trust.
