Moment of truth: Harris-Trump debate will appeal to undecided voters

Christopher Hawking, a 31-year-old worker, is looking forward to Tuesday’s televised presidential debate between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. This resident of Reading, a predominantly Latino city in the industrial heart of Pennsylvania, is one of those white blackbirds that can tip the electoral balance and for whom the two candidates are fighting to the death in the final stretch of the campaign: an undecided voter in a key state who says he will go to the polls no matter what on November 5, but who has not yet decided for whom. “I’m waiting for the debate. I will study very carefully what each one proposes and then I will see,” he explains.

The dialectical duel between Harris and Trump, which will take place at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday (3:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Spanish peninsular time) at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and which is organized by the ABC network, could not have the swords held higher. The two candidates are absolutely tied. The low percentage of undecided voters, around 8%, is fundamental in deciding which side the balance falls on, especially in the seven courted swing states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina). With 57 days to go until the polls, and after an unprecedented campaign due to the surprises it has accumulated, there is little room for error.

The key issue for the vast majority of voters will be the economy, according to polls. Hawking is also interested: “I graduated, got a job, but my salary wasn’t enough and I had to look for a second job. Now, the prices of everything have skyrocketed and I can’t even live on two jobs; I’ve had to ask my partner to cover some bills. Costs are skyrocketing, but salaries are still the same. I have a university degree, I work hard and I’ve never asked the state for a cent, but I have no prospects for improvement, I can’t aspire to anything better; certainly not even think about buying a house. And I can’t live from day to day forever,” laments this voter while walking through a Puerto Rican cultural festival in the streets of Reading. He admits that at the moment he is more drawn to Harris, but he is willing to change his mind if Trump’s proposals on the economy seem interesting to him.

The impact of the debate could be decisive. Tens of millions of voters will be watching, either at home or at the thousands of viewing parties that the two parties have organised in neighbourhoods across the country. Their impressions could lead them to change their voting intention or, as in the case of Hawking, to opt for one or the other. There will not be many more opportunities to influence the electorate so directly: at this stage, a second debate between the two presidential candidates is not planned – nor is it ruled out. And in the next few days, early voting and voting by mail will begin in a good part of the States: in Pennsylvania, considered the territory that could provide the key to the White House with its electoral votes, citizens will be able to start sending in their ballots starting on Monday.

In Philadelphia, everything is already ready for the event, the first time the two candidates will meet in person. Security around the Constitution Center has been tightened. The streets in the area are closed to traffic. The vice president traveled to Philadelphia on Monday from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s second largest city, where she has been preparing for the debate in a hotel. The tycoon is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.

Harris’ momentum stalled

The latest polls show a dead heat between the two. Poll aggregators on websites such as FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics point to a slight lead for Harris (2.8 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively), although on Sunday a poll by Siena-The New York Times placed the former president ahead by two percentage points. This is the first poll since the conventions of the two parties and Joe Biden’s withdrawal from re-election in July, which suggests that the momentum of Harris’s candidacy, which had managed to reverse the Democratic decline in the polls during the Biden era, may have stalled.

At a time like this, anything they say, any brilliant moment or any unforced error can resonate disproportionately with the electorate, in the form of memes and repeated over and over again on social media and television. Something that President Joe Biden already experienced firsthand: his gaffes in his debate against Trump ended up forcing his decision to resign a month later.

The Republican candidate faces the challenge of focusing his arguments on his electoral platform and not being offensive towards his opponent. His mission is to demonstrate to the skeptics that he has the presidential character, after an August in which he resorted to personal insults to describe his opponent.

Trump is not exactly the most disciplined of politicians and has on occasion said that he “has the right” to be aggressive towards his rival. At a rally in late August in North Carolina, he said that his advisers often advise him to be more friendly in his statements, but he acknowledged that “sometimes it is difficult when you are attacked from all sides.”

Harris’s task is equally, if not more, delicate. The vice president, who has insisted from the start that the Democrats are not the favourites in this election, has managed to regain the support and enthusiasm of a good part of the traditionally Democratic voting blocs that had distanced themselves from Biden. However, according to the polls, the numbers have not yet reached the levels that propelled Biden to the White House in 2020.

The Democratic candidate will have to take advantage of the debate to introduce herself to the large number of voters who say they still don’t know her well enough. They don’t know what her exact positions are or what she will do if she is elected president.

“I’m not sure what she stands for. She’ll probably be good for women and reproductive rights, but what else? What does she think? What is she going to do about the economy?” says Tony Farabee, an African-American voter originally from New York and now living in Pennsylvania. Farabee is also undecided, although he admits that for the moment he is tempted by Donald Trump: “I respect his strength,” he says. But he also says that he will watch the debate very closely: “I pray that it will give me clarity when it comes to deciding.”

Nearly 30 million people watched the final day of the Democratic convention on television, when Harris delivered her official acceptance speech as the party’s nominee, in late August. Nearly twice as many are expected to tune in to watch Tuesday’s debate.

Among them, despite his interest in following it, Christopher Hawking will not be there, who will have to wait to watch it on tape and carefully study what both candidates have said. “I cannot afford to sit down and watch it. At that time I have to be at one of my two jobs to be able to eat,” the worker concludes.

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