ABC News To Host Historic Presidential Debate Between Harris And Trump‌ 

ABC News will host a second presidential debate tonight, Sept. 10. It will be the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and former President Donald Trump (R). 

The moderators are David Muir and Linsey Davis. The debate will be hosted at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The debate starts at 9 p.m. EDT and will last 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. Candidate microphones will be muted when it is not the candidate’s turn to speak, and there will be no live audience.

When this debate was scheduled, President Joe Biden (D), who dropped out of the race on July 21, 2024, and Trump were the only two qualified candidates.

In order to qualify for the election, candidates must satisfy the constitutional eligibility requirements, be on enough state ballots to be eligible to win at least 270 electoral votes and have at least 15% support in four national polls that meet ABC’s editorial standards.

Harris said, preparing for the debate, “We should be prepared for the fact that [Trump] is not burdened by telling the truth. He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that will come out during the debate.” Senior Trump advisor Jason Miller said “Kamala Harris’ values have not changed, and we will be educating the American public as to what that means policy-wise, in great detail.”

For the first time since 1987, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has not hosted the debate because both major party presidential candidates declined to participate in CPD-hosted debates.

The chart above shows the number of presidential and vice presidential debates that took place in each election cycle between 1960 and 2024.

All 435 U.S. House seats are up for election in 2024. The Republicans currently hold a majority with 220 seats, while the Democrats have 211 seats, with four vacancies. Additionally, as of September 2024, 45 members of the U.S. House had announced they were not running for re-election.

Furthermore, Daily Kos calculated the results of the 2020 presidential election in this district following redistricting, showing that Donald Trump (R) would have defeated Joe Biden (D) with a 52.2% to 45.3% margin. 

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