Trump-Harris first presidential debate: What to watch for on Tuesday

Former United States President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are preparing to face-off in their first presidential debate, with the election less than two months away.

Tuesday’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 be a reflection of how dramatically the race has shifted in recent months.

Trump was originally 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 nominee for the presidency.

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.

What will Tuesday’s debate look like? What issues will be discussed? And what effect could the debate have on the race, with voting just on the horizon?

When and where is the debate?

The debate will take place at 9pm US Eastern Time on September 10 (01:00 GMT on Wednesday) at the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is set to last 90 minutes.

The NCC is a nonprofit organisation that houses a museum and promotes education about the US Constitution.

It has served as a venue for national political events in the past, including a Democratic presidential primary debate in 2008 and two ABC News town halls ahead of the 2020 election.

How to watch the debate?

The debate is being hosted by ABC News in collaboration with its local affiliate, WPVI-TV/6ABC.

The debate will air on ABC and be available to stream on platforms such as ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.

Who will moderate the debate?

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.

What is at stake in the debate?

With Biden’s decision to end his campaign upending the dynamics of the race, 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 percent nationally to leading by 1.8 points in the weeks since Harris’s entry into the race. That is a nearly five-point improvement in just over a month.

But 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.

In fact, a national poll by The New York Times and Sienna College released on Sunday showed Trump and Harris in practically a dead heat, with the former president marginally ahead. The poll also suggests that the momentum that Harris gathered over the past month might have somewhat stalled.

While presidential debates do not decide elections on their own, the narrow margin of this year’s race means that every success or slip-up can come with 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.”

What issues could be discussed?

While a list of questions has not been released, a number of issues have dominated the race so far.

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’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.”

What rules have been agreed to?

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.

But for Tuesday’s debate, the Harris campaign asked to reverse that stipulation, on the premise that 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 really 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.

For each question they face, the candidates have two minutes to respond. Rebuttals will also be capped at two minutes, with the possibility of an extra minute for a further response.

Both Harris and Trump will also have two minutes at the end of the night to offer a closing statement.

What about third-party candidates?

Third-party candidates in the US are generally considered long shots, and the threshold to qualify for Tuesday’s debate effectively limited their participation.

To be on stage, participants had to show they had drawn at least 15 percent support in four separate national polls, a bar no third-party candidate has been able to clear.

Will there be more debates after this one?

For the moment, no additional debates are scheduled. Tuesday’s encounter between Trump and Harris could mark the only time voters have a chance to watch them square off before voting.

Whether Tuesday’s debate would even happen was itself the subject of speculation. Trump previously suggested that he might skip it altogether and accused ABC News of bias.

He reversed course in a social media post last month, saying he had agreed to the September 10 debate.

But he included a swipe at the debate host in his message. “ABC FAKE NEWS,” he wrote, was “by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business”.