Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off on Tuesday night in their first, and perhaps only, TV duel. And they will do so in a climate of uncertainty. Forty-eight hours before the most anticipated match of the American election campaignHarris has a 52% chance of winning on November 5, Election Day. The average of the three predictive models assigns her 270 electors, the minimum required to go to the White House, against Trump’s 268. A difference of just two electors, less than two months before the vote, is nothing.
The model developed by FiveThirtyEight, the American site that tracks all the polls, gives the vice president a slightly larger advantage: a 55% chance of winning and 281 votes, while that of The Economist only 50% and 270 electors. The one developed by pollster Nate Silver reverses everything, giving Trump a 61% chance of winning and 278 electors. One of the key states remains Pennsylvania: whoever wins in this working-class state on the East Coast will have the victory in their grasp.
On one point everyone seems to agree: the debate could launch one of the two candidates. ABC News, the network that will host the duel from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will rely on the ability of two expert moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, to keep the debate on the tracks of clarity of content.
But the network has since been criticized by both sides of the aisle. Harris’s campaign has complained that some of its rules, such as keeping the microphone off when the other one is speaking, will hurt the vice president. Trump’s team has called ABC the “worst” and “most unpleasant.”
The two candidates are preparing differently. Harris has chosen a hotel in Pittsburgh as a base to study her opponent, while Trump said he didn’t need to prepare. He had said the same thing before the June 27 challenge with Joe Biden, and the facts proved him right: the tycoon had taken advantage of the president’s state of confusion to take off. A media disaster that had accelerated Biden’s exit from the scene and Harris’ entrance.
What will happen on Tuesday is in the territory of the seers, but we know the strong points of each: Harris will focus on women’s rights and attack Trump on his criminal record, starting with the 34-felony conviction handed down by a New York court for covering up a sex scandal. She will remind him of his ties to the foundation that drew up “Project 2025,” the agenda for the country’s authoritarian turn in the event of a victory by the former president, and his support for billionaires.
The tycoon will accuse Harris of having done nothing in these three and a half years, of not having solved the migrant problem, the cost of fuel and food and of having changed her mind, moving from the hard line when she was attorney general to more liberal positions once she became a candidate.
Kamala will accuse him of having ordered her people to block a law that would have secured the borders. Donald of having copied his ideas, starting with the exemption of waiters’ tips from taxes.
The only truly historic difference could be made by one tool: live fact-checking of the veracity of the two candidates’ statements.
So far, the American media have come out of it in pieces: neither of the two challengers has been challenged live on the validity of the statements. Journalists, both during television interviews and during public meetings or press conferences, like the two organized at Mar-a-Lago, have acted as an audience, they have taken note of the statements, without rebutting. Newspapers and TV have then done a check, indicating where the candidates made incorrect statements, but no one has noticed them. Only once has it happened: when Trump was a guest at the convention of African-American journalists. Three women, including a presenter from Trump’s Fox network, pressured him, ending up making him lose his temper. It hasn’t happened again, and it probably won’t happen again. For example: only a British journalist has put Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene in difficulty regarding her pro-gun position. No signal from the American media. And on social media, many voters would like to see fact-checking. The impact of a live protest would have a greater weight, especially in a duel that will probably see record ratings.
Today the husband of the vice president, Doug Emhoff, will campaign for Kammala in Norristown, Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, will lead a fundraiser in Los Angeles. ABC will host an interview today with Liz Cheney, a former Republican representative from Wyoming who has sided with Harris. She and her father, former US Vice President Dick Cheney, became the most prominent Republicans to endorse the Democratic candidate last week. But even in this case, everything is relative. What could mark a turning point will be the duel on Tuesday night and only that, from the moment the two challengers enter the studio and take their places behind the podium, when it will be 3:00 a.m. in Italy.
