2020 Presidential Debate Schedule Announced for General Election

Shane Goldmacher

October 12, 2019 5:20 AM

The nonpartisan commission that governs presidential debates announced Friday the dates and sites for the three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate during the 2020 general election.

2020 Presidential Debate Schedule Announced for General Election

All four debates will be held at universities, as has been recent custom.

The presidential debates will kick off Sept. 29 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates. (The campus is adjacent to South Bend, Indiana, where Pete Buttigieg, one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination, is mayor.)

The others will be held Oct. 15 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

The lone vice presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

President Donald Trump won Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Utah in 2016, three of them handily. In Michigan, which will most likely be a battleground state in 2020, he beat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 11,000 votes.

The debates will run for 90 minutes without commercial interruption, the commission said. The moderators and format will be announced later.

The commission has sponsored and produced the general election debates since the 1988 campaign.

Not only do general election debates attract more viewers than any other campaign event; historically, these matchups have ranked among television’s most-watched broadcasts, political or otherwise.

In 2016, the first debate between Trump and Clinton was seen by 84 million live television viewers, the biggest audience since television debates started in 1960.

The next Democratic primary debate, hosted by CNN and The New York Times, is scheduled for Tuesday night.

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