Washington: Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump is the clear favorite as the two major-party candidates for the White House go head-to-head in their crucial first debate on Monday.
If Clinton, the Democratic nominee, possesses deep Washington experience and in-depth knowledge of the issues, she lacks what supporters of her Republican rival see as his authenticity.
The two candidates have been laying into each other for a year but have never appeared face-to-face on the same stage, just strides apart. That surely will be one of the biggest attractions of the highly touted televised encounter, which analysts say could draw as many as 100 million viewers — a number never seen before in American politics.
The debate will be history-making in another way: No woman has ever taken part in a US presidential debate since they began in 1960, with Senator John F. Kennedy squaring off in a Chicago studio against vice-president Richard Nixon.
Most voters have already made their choice ahead of the November 8 election, and the series of three presidential debates (the others are October 9 and 19) will probably just reinforce them in their decisions.
Still, the debates can have an impact on voters still undecided on who should succeed Barack Obama. And these wavering voters appear to be more numerous than four years ago, amounting to nine percent of the electorate, according to an NBC poll.
“We typically don’t tune in to our televised debates to see who’s the smartest of the two candidates and which one has the most facts and figures and policy information that they’re spewing for 90 minutes,” Mitchell McKinney, professor of political communication at the University of Missouri said.
McKinney, a specialist in political debates, said television viewers favour candidates who manage to communicate their vision in a few simple, compelling and memorable phrases. Clinton will have to avoid fal ling into the trap of giving overly technical answers.
