US Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Presidential nominee will face a possible combative former President Donald Trump of the Republican Party in a debate today. The two candidates will go head-to-head for the first and perhaps only time before voters head to the polls in November.
Today’s debate will be the first time Trump and Harris—the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively—will share a stage. The two have never met in person. The debate is also set to reflect how dramatically the race has shifted in recent months.
While a list of questions has not been released, several issues have dominated the race. They include the economy, immigration, abortion, Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 election and foreign policy, particularly with wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza.
Trump was initially expected to face President Joe Biden at Tuesday’s event. But after an initial debate in June, Biden quit the race amid pressure over his stumbling performance and advanced age. The Democratic Party has since rallied around Harris, naming her its presidential nominee.
That change has galvanised Democratic voters and led to a significant improvement in national and state-level polls. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has struggled to respond to the opposition’s newfound enthusiasm.
With Harris on the upswing and Trump looking for a way to blunt her momentum, the debate could be their only direct encounter ahead of the vote on November 5.
The debate will begin at 9 pm US Eastern Time on September 10 (01:00 GMT on Wednesday) and last 90 minutes at the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The NCC is a nonprofit organization that houses a museum and promotes education about the US Constitution.
It has previously hosted national political events, including a Democratic presidential primary debate 2008 and two ABC News town halls ahead of the 2020 election.
ABC News is hosting the debate with its local affiliate, WPVI-TV/6ABC. It will air on ABC and be available to stream on platforms such as ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.
ABC’s World News Tonight host David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis will serve as moderators. Muir had moderated a Republican primary debate in February 2016, featuring then-candidate Trump in his first successful run for office. He and Davis also co-helmed the Democratic primary debates in September 2019 and February 2020.
With Biden’s decision to end his campaign, which will end the race’s dynamics, Harris and Trump will use the debate to build momentum as the campaign enters its final stretch.
Harris, in particular, has a relatively short time to pitch herself to voters before the vote as she replaced Biden in the race on July 21, a mere seven weeks ago. But the upheaval has been to her advantage as the Democrats have seen a substantial swing in their favour.
According to national polling averages by Real Clear Politics, Democrats have gone from trailing Trump by 3.1 per cent nationally to leading by 1.8 points in the weeks since Harris entered the race. That is a nearly five-point improvement in just over a month.
However, Marc Trussler, director of data sciences at the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said despite the impressive shift, Harris remains neck and neck with Trump.
“After a remarkable period with a lot of unprecedented events, we’ve ended up in a place that feels pretty familiar, with the Democratic nominee holding a slight advantage in a tight race that will come down to tens of thousands of voters in a handful of swing states,” Trussler said.
A national poll by The New York Times and Sienna College released on Sunday showed that Trump and Harris were in a dead heat, with the former president marginally ahead. The poll also suggests Harris’s momentum over the past month might have stalled somewhat.
While presidential debates do not decide elections independently, the narrow margin of this year’s race means that every success or slip-up can have consequences.
“Usually, we would say these debates don’t have much of an impact because the people who tune in tend to be those who have already made up their mind,” said Trussler. “But this is going to be a very close election, so anything that has the potential to move the needle even a little comes with high stakes.”
“Trump’s campaign will hope to emphasise inflation and immigration, where they think Harris is most vulnerable,” said Trussler. “For the Harris campaign, the emphasis will probably be on Trump’s general fitness for office and abortion.”
The rules over the debate have been a point of contention between the two campaigns.
For the first debate in June, Biden’s camp had asked that the microphones of both candidates be switched off while the other was speaking to avoid interruptions.
However, for Tuesday’s debate, the Harris campaign asked to reverse that stipulation, assuming the rule worked to Trump’s advantage.
Trump, after all, is known for outbursts and interruptions during debates, and Harris’s strategists suggested that a muted microphone may make him appear more disciplined than he is. Both campaigns eventually agreed to keep the muted microphones.
Only Trump and Harris are expected to appear onstage. No audience will be present at the live broadcast, and there will only be two breaks during the debate for commercials.
The candidates have two minutes to respond to each question. Rebuttals will also be capped at two minutes, with the possibility of an extra minute for a further response.
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