WHAT’S THE STORY?

TONIGHT, when most of us are safely tucked up in bed, President Donald Trump will face Senator Joe Biden in the final television debate of the 2020 presidential election campaign.

The Republican Party has been reeling as poll after poll shows Biden ahead, while the Democrat candidate won the first debate in the opinion of most observers. With the second debate cancelled after Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, Biden went ahead with a town hall event. That event again saw him come out on top after Trump held a similar simultaneous broadcast – crucially, Biden’s ratings were millions ahead of Trump’s.

Trump has generally been roasted in the media with major newspaper endorsements – often seen as crucial in helping undecided voters to choose – running at 20 to 1 in favour of Biden. According to Business Insider, only the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette have issued endorsements of Trump, compared to 39 who have endorsed Biden including giants such as the Washington Post, USA Today and the New York Times.

Tonight’s debate is being seen as Trump’s last chance to deliver a knockout blow to Biden via the media, of which the former reality television king is the master.

WHERE AND WHEN IS THE DEBATE AND WHAT IS THE FORMAT?

THE debate will be held tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The debate will start at 9pm Eastern Time, 2am tomorrow BST. It will run for 90 minutes without commercial interruption.

The moderator is Kristen Welker, the respected NBC news journalist. The 44-year-old is the channel’s White House correspondent based in Washington and co-anchor of Weekend Today, the Saturday edition of Today. The topics she has chosen – there could be possible changes because of news developments – for the six 15-minute segments of the debate are as follows: fighting Covid-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security, and leadership.

READ MORE: David Pratt: Understanding the raging Battle for the White House

Trump has already accused Welker of being biased. Apparently she had her picture taken with former President and First Lady Obama.

The big change from the first debate – sorry, shouting match – is that each candidate’s microphone will be muted when the other is making their pitch. The aim is to stop the interruptions in which Trump specialises.

He is furious at this intervention by the independent non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which is in charge of the whole television debating process.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT?

TRUMP will try repeatedly to slag off Biden for his age, supposed infirmity, and his son’s dodgy business deals. Biden will attack Trump’s record on coronavirus and he was handed a gift yesterday to help deal with any accusations against his son Hunter – it was revealed that Trump, the hammer of China as he would like to be known, had been trying to do major business in the country before his election and his companies also paid six-figure sums in tax to the Chinese Government.

Forbes magazine also accused Trump’s businesses of getting $8 million from the Republic Party campaign budget in fees for the use of his hotels and other expenses.

The biggest problem for Biden is climate change – his stance on fracking has been controversial – while Trump is most likely to make a major error when the subject of race is discussed.

BUT WILL ANY OF IT MATTER?

LAST year, a study of 61 elections in nine countries by Harvard Business School found that TV debates in those elections cycles appeared to have little effect on the percentage of voters who changed their mind.

The research stated: “High-profile TV debates didn’t increase the fraction of voters who had settled on a candidate nor the candidates’ vote shares.

“This suggests that voters who shift to another candidate are influenced by other types of information, such as media coverage of the campaign or personal discussions.”

With 25 million votes already in, the debate is aimed squarely at the less than five per cent of voters who consider themselves undecided. That’s still millions of votes to fight for, and the smart call has to be that Biden just needs to not make any big mistakes to emerge as the front-runner on Friday morning.