Do presidential debates matter?

Of particular note is the late change atop the Democratic ticket, with Harris taking over for Biden in mid-July. This has resulted in a unique scenario. Voters often become quite familiar with candidates across many months or longer, either due to their track record as the incumbent or across several months of campaign events across campaign season.

In such situations, debates often provide little new about the candidates—who they are and what they stand for is already fairly well established.

In this cycle, Harris is a lesser-known commodity—in terms of specific priorities and policy positions—due to her late entry into the race. This could make this debate more important for the Harris campaign to define her candidacy than in a more traditional year election year.

There have also been differences in the planning and production of the 2024 debates. Since the late 1980s, the Commission on Presidential Debates, or CPD, has been responsible for organizing presidential debates in the US. As a bipartisan group, the CPD would broker agreements between the major-party presidential candidates and their campaigns on matters such as debate format, topic, location, and timing. This usually resulted in a series of three debates (and an additional debate between nominees for vice president) beginning in September, with variations in topic focus and format across the three.

This year, the CPD has been left out of the process altogether. The Republican National Committee withdrew from the CPD in 2022, alleging unfair treatment. And in May, the campaigns for then-candidate Biden and Trump—after some public back and forth—independently negotiated an agreement to hold two debates to take place on June 27 and September 10 (still going forward, though with Harris instead of Biden) without any CPD involvement.

Some of the details around the debates also differ from earlier CPD-hosted debates; for example, the campaigns have agreed to mute their candidate’s microphones when it is not their turn to speak and there will be no studio audience for the debate.