Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump has not yet confirmed whether he will meet Vice President Kamala Harris on the debate stage, but organizers will go ahead with the originally scheduled Sept. 10 debate as scheduled.
ABC News, which hosts the debate, released a list of criteria on Friday to determine which candidates are eligible to participate, and both Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Harris would have to go above and beyond to qualify for their first showdown.
more:Trump vows not to attend any debates until Kamala Harris is nominated at the party convention
With no other debates planned or confirmed, the September debate will likely be voters' first and only opportunity to see the rival candidates before heading to the ballot box in early November.
To qualify for the debate, Trump and Harris need to receive at least 15% support in four national polls of registered or likely voters, ABC News said in a news release Friday. Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s approval rating has generally hovered around half that amount, meaning he did not qualify for the first debate, which was hosted by CNN.
In addition to meeting the constitutional requirements to serve as president and filing a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, a candidate must appear on the ballot in a “sufficient number” of states to receive a majority of the electoral votes in the presidential election.
The candidates also must agree to the rules of the ABC News debate, which have yet to be made public.
The network will “promptly” determine whether participants meet these conditions after September 3, according to a statement from ABC News.
With Harris likely to be the Democratic nominee, representatives for the Trump campaign have so far declined to comment on whether the former president will attend the September debate.
“Given the ongoing political turmoil surrounding Uncle Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, details for the general election debates cannot be finalized until the Democratic Party has formally decided on its nominee,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Chang said in a statement to USA Today on Friday.
Trump had agreed to hold three debates with Biden before dropping out of the presidential race, and Harris said she was open to debating Trump on Thursday, accusing him of breaking that promise.
“I have agreed to the debate on September 10th, which we had agreed to before. He had agreed to it before too. Now it seems like he's backing away, but I'm ready,” she said.
ABC News said it will use four polls conducted and published by different organizations between Aug. 1, 2024 and Sept. 3, 2024. Only publicly published polls will be eligible, and they will be collected from highly regarded news organizations and research centers, including CNN, The New York Times/Siena College, Quinnipiac University and The Wall Street Journal.
USA Today's Sudiksha Kochi contributed to this report.
Kathryn Palmer is an elections fellow at USA TODAY. She can be reached at kapalmer@gannett.com or on X: @KathrynPlmr.
