Vice President Kamala Harris And former President Donald Trump is set to face off Tuesday in a key moment that could swing an unusually close 2024 race.
It will be the first time Harris and Trump have met face-to-face, a reminder of how dramatically the contest has changed since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July.
Harris’s entry will fuel the debate. Trump has struggled to settle on the obvious attacks against him and has lost ground since Biden’s exit. Still, national polling averages show Harris with only a slight lead. In some cases, the race is even closer A small number of swing states Which will decide the election.
As of Friday, in only one state, Wisconsin, where Harris is leading, the Washington Post polling average separated the pair by more than 3 percentage points. Electoral forecaster Nate Silver has Trump as a slight favorite to win the Electoral College and thus the presidency.
Trump hammed and hawed on the rules of the debate in the wake of Biden’s exit, but given Harris’ momentum, he could never seriously miss a face. A few days before the debate, Harris agreed to mute the microphone of a candidate who was not speaking. Biden’s team initially sought a change to that rule before the June debate, but Harris’ team tried to push Trump to return to a more free-for-fall format. Trump himself indicated that he would be open to being called “Hot” or “open” mixBut he ultimately stuck with the terms he and Biden agreed to.
Here are the important facts you need to know ahead of Tuesday night’s debate.
When is it and how can I watch it?
The first debate between Harris and Trump is set for Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. ABC News will host the debate, but the other major networks will offer a simulcast. The debate will air on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. You also don’t need a cable log-in to access ABC News Live here.
The talk will be 90 minutes long and will have two commercial breaks.
Who are the mediators?
David Muir, anchor of ABC’s flagship “World News Tonight,” and Lynsey Davis, anchor of the Sunday edition of “World News Tonight,” are set to moderate. Both reporters have covered presidential primary debates before but this will be their first general election debate.
Will the mix be muted?
Yes. Harris’ campaign confirmed in a letter to ABC News that it will accept that the candidate’s microphone will be muted when it is not his turn to speak.
“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, would be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which would serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the vice president,” the Harris campaign wrote in a letter to ABC.
Ultimately, the vice president’s campaign said they accepted the rules so as not to “jeopardize the debate.”
How will this be different?
like June’s Biden-Trump debateThis face-off is fundamentally different from any modern presidential debate. That’s because both campaigns agreed on tough weapons Commission on Presidential DebatesA bipartisan group that hosted the presidential debates for decades. Republicans left the debate commission in 2022, but it was Biden’s campaign that delivered the final blow. As in June, there will be no live audience. Biden’s campaign said in May that muting the mix and nixing the audience would return the presidential debates to an acceptable level — almost everyone agrees that the first debate in 2020 was an abject disaster because Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden.
What questions can we expect?
Only Muir, Davis and a select few at ABC News know the exact questions. Unlike some past presidential debates, there is no theme for the night. That being said, it’s a virtual guarantee that economy-related questions will dominate the evening.
Polls consistently show that voters see the economy as the biggest issue in the election. But recently, Harris has cut back on Trump’s once-broad advantage of the topic. A Wall Street Journal poll in late August found that Trump had an advantage of about eight percentage points when voters were asked who would best handle the economy. He also kept a 5-point lead to better handle inflation. His margins are good, but nowhere near the 20-point advantage he once held over President Joe Biden on both issues late last year.
Harris has released a handful of economic plans. It is proposed to give up to $25,000 to first-time home buyersA A potential $50,000 tax credit Biden also broke with him by proposing a 28% capital gains tax rate for small business owners, and for Americans making at least $1 million—well below the White House’s proposed 39.6% top rate on capital gains.
Trump laid out his economic agenda in a speech to the New York Economic Club on Thursday. He promises to cut regulations and largely hopes to bank on voters’ nostalgia for the pre-COVID-19 economy he oversaw. Trump also announced his support for a quasi-US sovereign wealth fund, though he gave few details on how it would work.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs It was recently concluded that Harris’ plans would further boost the US economy. While Trump, particularly a return to his tariff-driven trade policy, will lead to a slight contraction of the economy.
What will Trump’s approach be?
Trump wants to stifle Harris’ momentum by portraying his rush to the center as dishonest. He’s also trying to brand her as a communist, a return to the long-standing GOP tactic of invoking the Red Scare. As he did before facing off against Biden, the former president spent the lead-up to the debate trashing ABC News. Trump is known in the sports world for what is called “Working of referees,But his attacks also lay the groundwork for him to dismiss the entire debate as harsh if it doesn’t go well. Trump has repeatedly said that during the June debate on whether CNN was fair, his allies questioned whether the network could be impartial.
Trump took particular shots at “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, even though the former Clinton aide was not one of the two moderators.
How will Harris try to win?
Harris is telegraphing that she told Vice President Mike Pence she wanted to end the debate with a viral moment, “Mr. Vice President, I speak” when he spoke on it during the 2020 vice presidential debate. Harris reminded supporters of what happened in a fundraising email titled “Do you remember this” that included a gif of the moment. Reuters reported that Harris’ team “believes that the debate will be viewed by many people as video clips on social media platforms.”
She has spent the past few days in Pittsburgh, holding a mini-debate prep camp. Former Clinton aide Philip Raines is playing a role in Trump’s humorous debates, a role he also took on for Clinton in 2016.
What next after the debate?
The major party’s vice presidential candidates, Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are set to debate Oct. 1 in New York City. CBS News will host that debate. Trump and Harris are also expected to meet again next month, although those details are still being finalized.
Voters will also be able to vote soon. North Carolina began mailing ballots Friday. Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state of all, will begin in-person early voting on September 16.
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