This paper examines the overall effect of the 1976 presidential debates on the public's learning about issues and candidates, identifying several factors that are linked to campaign learning and that explain individual differences in the amount of learning that occurred from watching the debates. Findings presented in this paper are based on an intensive study of the experiences of 21 members of four panels (totaling 164 randomly selected, registered voters) that were observed for political learning throughout the 1976 campaign year. The paper concludes that the debates produced a measurable impact on audience members; those people who already knew much about the election issues and candidates learned more from the debates; of the demographic factors age, sex, and education, only level of education influenced political learning; debates, conventions, primaries, and similar highly publicized, dramatic occurrences are parts of a cumulative information process, and their effects on political learning cannot be studied in isolation; and the study is taken to demonstrate the utility of the small, intensive sample approach for pilot-testing major hypotheses about political learning. (RL)