Rivals Harris and Trump are just hours away from facing each other on the debate stage for the first, and possibly only, time before the Nov. 5 election — a high-stakes duel that could prove pivotal to the race’s outcome.
The candidates are polling neck and neck, and still-swayable voters in just a handful of battleground states will likely have the final say over who will spend the next four years in the White House.
Harris has spent recent days holed up in a Pittsburgh hotel to prepare for her rendezvous with Trump — sparring with a Trump-impersonating partner in mock debates and studying policy materials. The former president, meanwhile, has eschewed typical debate prep methods, as he normally does, but turned to former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, for pointers.
Each candidate has a chance to shape the race’s final stretch during their match-up in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Trump faced off against President Biden in June in what would have been the first debate of the cycle, but Biden’s widely panned performance ultimately led to his campaign exit and Harris’s promotion to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Trump and Harris, meanwhile, have never met face-to-face, as Trump skipped Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
Harris is ahead in current polls by about 3 points, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national average tracker, but neither candidate has a firm hold on the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.
Nearly a third of registered voters surveyed in a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll said they are looking to the debate to help decide which candidate gets their vote. The rest said the debate wouldn’t have an impact.
But the poll still found that most voters (70 percent) said they will tune in, while about 23 percent said they won’t watch it live but will likely keep up with news coverage from it.
The debate, which will be moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, begins at 9 p.m. ET and will last about 90 minutes, with two scheduled commercial breaks.
Only the moderators will be able to ask questions, and the candidates’ mics will be muted unless it’s their turn to speak.
There will be no live audience in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center to watch the historic event – the only debate that both campaigns have publicly agreed to at this time.
