Schedule set for 2020 general election presidential and vice presidential debates
The nonpartisan organization that sponsors presidential general election debates has announced the schedule for the 2020 election season, including three presidential and one vice presidential debates.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced the dates and locations of the debates on Friday, and will release further details including the moderators and format next year.
The first presidential debate will be Sept. 29, 2020, at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind.
The only scheduled vice presidential debate will be hosted by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Oct. 7, 2020.
A second presidential debate is set for Oct. 15, 2020, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The third and final presidential debate will be hosted by Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020, which is less than two weeks before Election Day.
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All four scheduled debates will be hosted in states won by President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
The first debate of the season will also be the first presidential debate ever hosted at Notre Dame, school officials said. The university is located in one of just four counties in Indiana that voted Democratic in 2016. That county also contains South Bend, the city where 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is mayor.
Salt Lake City, where the only vice presidential debate will take place, is likewise a region in the vastly Republican state of Utah that voted Democratic in 2016. A 2016 Republican primary debate in Salt Lake was canceled after Trump said he would not participate.
Ann Arbor, Mich., voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, as did Nashville. Belmont University also hosted a 2008 debate between then-Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.
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Each 90-minute debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET and run without commercials, the commission said.
The commission sets criteria for appearing in a general election debate, which includes that candidates must qualify to appear on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of securing the electoral college votes needed to win the election (at least 270), and that they must receive an average of at least 15% in five selected national polls.
The criteria allow for qualifying candidates outside the two major parties to participate in debates, though no third-party candidate has qualified in recent years.
Democratic and Republican nominees will be announced in July and August of 2020, respectively. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020.
In the meantime, the Democratic National Committee's criteria continue to narrow the field for the party's primary debate stage, and the president has said he will not debate GOP primary opponents.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2020: Dates, locations announced for general election debates
