Trump attacks Harris’ biggest vulnerabilities in the debate. His answer could decide the election.

• The 2024 race is too close to call before the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

• Harris enters the debate with clear momentum, but Trump has remained strong in the small battlegrounds.

• Tuesday night’s debate could topple an already chaotic race.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will share the stage for the first time Tuesday night, offering voters a look at the two major presidential candidates together after a summer of almost unprecedented upheaval.

Trump appears to have begun to slow Harris’ rise, which began after the fall of President Joe Biden. He has reduced the former president’s fundraising numbers, staged raucous protests and, most importantly, cut into his leadership position. But a closely watched New York Times-Siena poll on Sunday showed why Trump remains a slight favorite in many cases.

Polls in most battleground states show margins that are too close to call. At this point in 2016, Trump was further behind Hillary Clinton. And both in that race and in 2020, polls underestimate his support. Trump is also holding strong in Pennsylvania, which is the main battleground of the election.

The debate offers both sides a chance to cut the knife-thin competition. Harris faces his biggest audience since his historic nomination. Tens of millions of Americans historically watch these encounters. More than 51 million Americans participated in June’s debate, the earliest ever, which included a 2020 rematch that polls had long shown the nation dreaded. In both 2016 and 2020, only the Super Bowl received higher ratings.

“So it’s like the NFL and the debates by a country mile are the most watched things, so all these people are tuning in, and the research is sure that voters learn a lot from the debates and they leave the debates confident that they know about the campaign to engage meaningfully in politics,” said Ben Warner, political professor of communication at the University of Missouri.

Warner said the perennial Washington parlor game about how much the debates actually matter overshadows what he and other researchers have found: that everyday Americans rely on the debates to inform their opinions of the candidates.

“You can say, ‘Are they really learning the nuances of the political differences between the candidates?'” Warned said. “I think what’s more important is how they relate to the candidates as people, they feel they know what the candidates stand for, and they’re comfortable making informed decisions between the candidates.”

Trump is likely to confront Harris about his changing views.

This is also Harris’ most unscripted moment to date. Trump and his allies have been unsuccessful in trying to get him to hold more news conferences. They have also pointed out that his website had no political positions until Sunday evening.

“Kamala has been in a total bubble, she has done half of the interview and otherwise has not encountered any unscripted moments,” Matt Wolking, who served as Trump’s 2020 bid deputy communications director, commented to Business Insider.

Harris and his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down for a joint interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, but outside of that appearance, the vice president has had little interaction with the press. By comparison, Trump has held several news conferences and is trying to appeal to younger men through lengthy podcast host interviews. At the same time, Harris has abandoned many of his most progressive views, which he espoused in his failed 2020 Democratic presidential bid. Trump’s allies are hoping he’ll speak in what they consider absurd flip-flops.

“He’s not quite sure what he believes, and so he’s pretty evasive about politics, political positions he’s supported in the past and presumably what he doesn’t support now,” Wolking said. “I think her taking on two or three of Trump’s positions makes her look like a chameleon.”

Trump lashed out at Harris after she followed him and promised not to tax tips, a policy of Nevada’s powerful culinary union. Nor has Harris offered much of an explanation for his changing views. When Bash asked him about it, the vice president repeatedly declared that while some attitudes may have changed, “my values ​​haven’t.”

A Democratic pollster cautions that Harris should be careful when answering.

Since replacing Biden, Harris’ team has adopted a more brash and trollish tone, aimed at getting under Trump’s skin. Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith said Harris needs to make sure the lasting moment of the debate isn’t a one-liner, but rather a reflection of what he would do in office.

“Voters are always, ten times out of ten, more interested in hearing Kamala Harris talk about what she’s going to do and is going to do than anything else, whether it’s a blatant protest, an attack on Donald Trump, or anything else that could come out Kamala from Harris’ mouth,” Roth Smith, president of Reid Hoffman-backed Blueprint, told Business Insider.

A Roth Smith poll found that voters would like Harris to continue expressing his views “relatively broadly.” He warned against getting too attached to the specifics of politics.

“It doesn’t matter who’s asking if they’re bona fide actors or bona fide actors, it would be a mistake for Kamala Harris and the Harris campaign, after the 60-day hiatus, to turn into a campaign of policy white papers. A campaign of priorities, energy and directional focus,” Roth Smith. “They seem to understand that and I hope we see that in the debate.”

Harris himself has played down Trump’s personal attacks, but Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik says he’s watching the former president’s handling of him very closely. Trump has a long history of attacking female foes in particularly caustic ways, which has highlighted and exacerbated his struggle to appeal to women more broadly.

“I think it’s especially important in this election, given how Trump treats women in general and how Trump treats black women in particular,” Sosnik said. “For me, that dynamic is one of the most important to watch.”

Sosnik stressed that viewers may react differently to Trump’s actions than in 2016, when he was behind Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in their town hall debate. The candidates will have to stay behind their podiums during Tuesday’s debate, but that won’t stop Trump from throwing around words, such as when he called Clinton a “nasty woman,” an attack Democrats later fashioned into a badge of honor.

“The world is different now than it was eight years ago in many ways, including the behavior he displayed in 2016. I think he could get away with a lot more then than he can now, offending people, some men, but certain women voters,” Sosnik said.

The competition is so close that even a small post-debate bump can be huge.

Tuesday’s debate will be the first time Harris and Trump have been in the same room together. It was supposed to be the second debate between Trump and Biden, but the president’s disastrous debate performance set off a downward spiral that culminated in his decision to drop out. With the possible exception of the Nixon-Kennedy debate, no other presidential debate in history is greater.

The Harris-Trump debate is struggling to survive that. But the sheer closeness of the competition means their conversation matters – perhaps much more than usual.

“I could show you over time that more often than not, none of those three things matter to the outcome of the election,” Sosnik said of the vice presidential pick, conventions and infrequent debates. “In this election, all three probably mattered. Discussions certainly have mattered and will continue to matter.”

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