2020 Showdown: Dates & Locations Set For General Election Debates
Click here to read the full article.
The general election debates in the fall of 2020 will take place in Notre Dame, IN, Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor, MI, and Nashville.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced the selected cities Friday.
More from Deadline
Trump Claims Oprah "Loved Me Until I Decided To Run For Office"
This Week In Music: Trump Takes On Beyonce, Bruce And Prince, While Hong Kong Gets Its Own Song
Unlike the primary debates, which are aired exclusively on broadcast or cable outlets, the general-election debates are run across all networks. They are overseen not by the parties or the campaigns but a bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates that was set up in 1987.
The dates for the 2020 presidential debates will be: September 29 at the University of Notre Dame, October 15 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and October 22 at Belmont University in Nashville. A vice presidential debate will be held October 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
All debates will start at 9 p.m. ET and run for 90 minutes without commercial interruption. Moderators and additional details about the debates will be announced next year.
President Donald Trump already has grumbled about Democrats’ decision to not let Fox News host any of the primary debates. He suggested he would do the same with the general-election debates, though the commission is set up as bipartisan.
He wrote in March, “Democrats just blocked @FoxNews from holding a debate. Good, then I think I’ll do the same thing with the Fake News Networks and the Radical Left Democrats in the General Election debates!”
Roughly speaking, the eligibility threshold to enter the debate is to have a level of support of at least 15% in five national polls. That has kept out almost all third-party candidates. The exception was Ross Perot, who participated in the 1992 presidential debates along with Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
