Watch: The ABC News Presidential Debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump
Sep 10, 2024, 5:00 PM
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are gearing up to take the stage for Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, where they’ll fight to sway 2024 election voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics.
The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and both sides chose their running mates.
Polling shows that Vice President Kamala Harris enters the presidential debate as the candidate who Americans are more likely to perceive as honest, committed to democracy and as someone who cares about people liking them, according to an August AP-NORC poll.
But former President Donald Trump has an edge over her when it comes to Americans thinking he’s being better positioned to handle the issues of economy and immigration.
Harris has more of an advantage over Trump when it comes to handling issues related to race and racial inequality, abortion policy and health care. Americans may also expect her to appear as a composed candidate — about half (47%) of Americans say the phrase “disciplined” better describes her over Trump (28%).
And although Trump has spent the campaign championing himself as a strong leader who is capable of handling tough crises facing the country, the AP-NORC poll shows Americans overall do not give him an advantage over Harris on those traits.
Trump’s strength currently lies in the fact that Americans are slightly more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy or immigration. Independents are about twice as likely to trust Trump over Harris on economic issues.
Do debates still matters? A top expert on presidential debates says yes
It’s easy to say presidential debates no longer matter in an a hyper-partisan era with dwindling numbers of true independents and swing voters. But one of the nation’s foremost experts on political communications and presidential debate history says that opinion is wrong.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said debates mostly “reinforce voters’ ideas” but still are important in moving voters who have yet to decide whom to support or whether to vote at all. And that “can change the outcomes in close races.” Indeed, both Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020 were decided by fewer than 100,000 votes spread across three states.
Jamieson said that even with the focus on theater and declaring a so-called winner, “the public does learn from debates” and that research shows debates “increase the likelihood that audience members can accurately report the positions articulated by the candidate.”
Many voters might sound skeptical that politicians follow through on their platforms, but Jamieson said research shows that “in general, candidates act on their promises.”
She said policy substance can be overshadowed sometimes — most recently in June when the debate fallout was about President Joe Biden’s fitness to seek and serve another term. But even in that Trump-Biden match-up, she said “there were at least seven or eight important issue distinctions” that were clear if you look beyond Biden’s rhetorical struggles.
“So debates are an important democratic structure,” she said. “They are what tie campaigns to governance.”
