Trump vs. Clinton, Round 2 — A Preview of Sunday Night’s Second Presidential Debate
On Sunday night, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will meet in a town-hall setting at Washington University in St. Louis. The event starts at 9 p.m. ET and will run for 90 minutes.
According to the Commission on Presidential Debates:
The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which half of the questions will be posed directly by citizen participants and the other half will be posed by the moderator based on topics of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources. The candidates will have two minutes to respond and there will be an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate further discussion. The town meeting participants will be uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization.
Each candidate has distinct goals this time around. The Republican, Trump, needs to bounce back after a widely criticized performance the first time around. Immigration, his signature issue, figures to feature prominently. Clinton, the Democrat, has enjoyed a rise in the polls following the first debate, and she will look to consolidate her gains, appealing particularly to millennial voters, with whom she has struggled to connect.
This debate follows last Monday's contest on Long Island, which was held in the traditional style with each candidate standing behind a lectern while a moderator, Lester Holt of NBC News, asked them questions. This second debate will be co-moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper. The town-hall format is looser, with candidates allowed to roam about the venue and address individual audience members, as well as the moderators.
The event will be shown on C-SPAN, all major news networks, and the cable-news channels. You can live-stream on any of their sites (such as right here). The previous debate was the highest-rated in history, reaching approximately 84 million viewers. Anticipation for round 2 is also high, though perhaps not quite at that level.
And you can watch any televised debate dating back to 1960's Richard Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy here, including the first Trump-Clinton matchup (see below) and the vice-presidential contest between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine.