Why isn't Trump doing a second debate?

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, debates Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on September 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

If no further televised debates are held, it will be the fewest between the two major party nominees since 1972

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 25 September 2024

In a September 12 post on his social media website Truth Social, former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump announced that he would not participate in any more general election debates with Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. If no further televised debates are held, it will be the fewest between the two major party nominees since 1972, when there were none. There are likely a number of reasons why the former president doesn't want to have another debate with Harris, who has said she wants more.

A debate system in transition

Claiming consistent bias against Republican candidates, the Republican National Committee (RNC) withdrew in 2022 from the longstanding Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a non-partisan organization which arranged three presidential debates per election between 1988 and 2022. Nevertheless, In May 2024, Republican nominee Donald Trump and then–Democratic nominee President Joe Biden agreed to two debates, one on June 27th and one on September 10th. Biden's performance in the June debate was so poor that it eventually pushed him from the race, and his replacement, Vice President Harris, agreed to go forward with the September 10th debate.

After what was widely regarded as a weak performance in his debate against Harris, Trump's campaign is refusing to agree to another match-up. Trump and other Republicans insist that the moderators of ABC's September 10th debate were biased. Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly fact-checked Trump during the debate, while neither moderator fact-checked Harris, which conservatives say is a double standard. "This is not a debate, this is a public show trial where the judge, jury, and executioner is ABC News," said Charlie Kirk, a commentator and key Trump supporter, on X. "To be honest they are a news organization, they have to be licensed," Trump said on Fox and Friends. "They ought to take away their license for the way they did that."

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Beyond the claims and counter-claims, Trump's decision to hold off on further debates with Harris is likely a strategic calculation. Reputable post-debate snap polls showed that Harris was regarded as the winner of the debate by a considerable margin, and her national lead ticked up slightly in the week that followed, according to polling aggregators like those maintained by FiveThirtyEight and The Silver Bulletin. Media coverage of Trump's performance, especially his widely debunked claim that immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, has likely contributed to that movement.

Political scientists generally believe that the effects of debates on general election outcomes are limited, particularly given that the U.S. electorate is polarized with a relatively small share of undecided voters. But there is no question that the June debate between Trump and Biden resulted in a significant decline in Biden's standing in polls, especially as the media narrative about his performance set in. Now, Trump might not want to take the chance of making his position even worse. "The former president might be right to mitigate the risk," said Stephen Collinson at CNN, especially given that despite his performance in the debate with Harris, the race remains a "dead heat."

Harris might also have incentives not to push for another debate. Another decisive debate victory for her is not guaranteed, and as the polling leader, her campaign may have decided debates constitute an unnecessary risk. After all, Trump's poor performance was largely his own doing, as he repeatedly went off on tangents that seemed to be inspired by his allies in far-right media, like conspiracy theorist and conservative activist Laura Loomer. In addition to the controversy over immigrants, Trump stumbled over other questions, including those about health care. The moderators asked whether he had a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, and Trump replied that he had only "concepts of a plan." Trump "certainly couldn't get any worse" in a second debate, said Syracuse University political scientist Grant Davis Reeher to Newsweek.

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David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.