Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will square off Tuesday night for what could be their only debate of the compressed presidential election campaign, with the race exceedingly close and voters still craving more information about the Democratic nominee.

High Stakes Debate

The stakes are high for both candidates. For Harris, the debate on ABC, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET, will be an opportunity to show voters hoping for change that she is the candidate to help the nation turn the page on an era of extraordinary division. For Trump, it is yet another chance to try to show discipline as he seeks to portray Harris as a California liberal who is out of step with voters worried about inflation, crime and illegal immigration.

Election Day is now eight weeks away, and early voting begins within days. After the debate, both campaigns will spring into high gear, especially in the critical battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The only remaining milestone currently on the calendar is a vice presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 1.

The impact of presidential debates in the past has at times been negligible, coming at the end of long, arduous campaigns when opinions of the candidates have had time to solidify. The 2024 election, however, is extraordinary. It was the first general election debate on June 27 — a historically early showdown — that chased President Joe Biden from the race. Harris secured the Democratic nomination barely a month ago after Biden announced he was dropping his reelection bid.

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28% of Voters Need More Information on Harris

Though Harris has spent nearly four years a heartbeat from the presidency, a New York Times/Siena College poll over the weekend found that 28% of likely voters said they felt they needed to know more about her. Nearly half of those specified that they wanted to know more about her policy proposals.

With Trump a far more known quantity, Harris may have more pressure on her at the debate to clearly communicate her agenda, but she also may have more opportunity to make an impression with the slim sector of the electorate still undecided.

For his part, Trump, in debates going back to 2015 and the Republican primary season, has left startling impressions with his no-holds-barred style. But many of those impressions have not sat well with voters, many of whom say they like his policies but not his brash persona.

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Here Is What Else to Know:

• How to watch: The debate, starting at 9 p.m. ET, will be hosted by ABC News from Philadelphia. The New York Times will stream the debate as more than two dozen reporters analyze and fact-check in real time.
• The rules: The campaigns agreed to the same guidelines that were used in June, when Trump and Biden faced off. That means that microphones will be muted when a candidate is not talking, the candidates cannot ask each other questions and there will be no audience, among other things.
• Harris’ guests: The Harris campaign will bring Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former White House communications director, and Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, to the debate. Scaramucci and Troye are now Trump critics, and inviting them is an obvious attempt to get under Trump’s skin.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonathan Weisman/Kenny Holston
c. 2024 The New York Times Company