Donald Trump set for a last-stand debate

Expect another slugfest when the two widely disliked candidates meet today in Las Vegas | INTERACTIVE

Donald Trump at a rally in Grand Junction, Colorado, yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

Today’s third and final US presidential debate presents Republic­an nominee Donald Trump with a last chance to address tens of ­millions of voters and recast a race in which polls show his Democrat Hillary Clinton is pulling away.

It will be a tough task, political scientists say, because debates rarely provide a singular, game-changing moment in a president­ial contest. Instead, members of both parties expect another slugfest when the two widely disliked nominees meet in Las Vegas.

Democrats want Mrs Clinton to articulate a positive vision at a time when the election has revolved around accusations of sexual misconduct and dishonesty.

“This is her last big opportunity to be in front of a big national audience and make her case,” Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said yesterday. She said undecided voters wanted to hear about issues.

Republicans say Mr Trump needs to focus on his popular anti-establishment message and shift attention away from controversies over his treatment of women and rifts with fellow Republicans.

Mr Trump has tried to introduce new messages into his campaign recently, but it has been a faltering effort. He promoted term limits on members of congress and temporary lobbying bans on legislative and executive-branch workers. He also called for pre-debate drug tests, offered dire warnings about voter fraud and attacked his party’s top elected official, house Speaker Paul Ryan.

“For once he needs to make this a race that’s not just about him,” said Kevin Madden, who advised Republican Mitt Romney’s run in 2012. “Clinton wants this race to be a referendum on Trump and his lack of temperament, and every time she lays the bait he never dis­appoints in taking it.”

Mr Trump has highlighted the hacked emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He says the messages depict Mrs Clinton’s close ties to Wall Street bankers and special interests.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has said the Republican would continue to talk about those topics at the debate.

The FBI suspects Russian intelligence officials stole the Clinton campaign emails, and Mrs Clinton is likely to try to put Mr Trump on the defensive given his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Colorado yesterday, Mr Trump promised an “interesting” debate as his team confirmed he had invited Barack Obama’s ­Kenyan-born half-brother Malik, who has had a strained relationship with the President. Also invited is Pat Smith, the mother of a State Department computer consultant who was killed in the 2012 Ben­ghazi terrorist attacks.

If there was a race-changing debate it probably was the first one, said James Stimson, a Uni­versity of North Carolina political science professor who has studied presidential debates.

After weeks of disciplined campaigning, Mr Trump had nearly closed the gap with Mrs Clinton heading into the September 22 event in New York.

However, after his unfocused and uneven performance, Mrs Clinton’s lead grew. She had a lead of 2.3 percentage points before the face-off, according to a Real Clear Politics average of polls. She had a seven-point advantage yesterday.

Professor Stimson, who determined that no debate had caused a substantial shift in the polls ­between 1960 and 2000, said the first debate had been the “singular important event” in this year’s race. “That made the difference between a narrow lead for Clinton, that could have been easily overcome, and the lead we see today,” he said. “It had been to (Mr Trump’s) advantage that he was an outsider, but he simply showed he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Mr Trump’s troubles were ­re­inforced on social media. A Saturday Night Live depiction of the first debate — in which actor Alex Baldwin portrayed Mr Trump as illogical and overly confrontational — has been viewed more than 36 million times on YouTube and Facebook.

But Mr Trump’s legions of ­followers on Twitter and Facebook gave him a chance to deliver a viral moment today that could remain in voters’ minds for the final 20 days of the race, said Robert Erikson, a Columbia University political science professor. “If there is some major event from the debate — a shocker of some kind or another — social media will help amplify that more than it would have been otherwise,” said Professor Erikson, co-author of a study that determined debates had little effect on presidential races. “But even on social media, people are mostly reinforcing their previous preferences.”

On Twitter, the most talked- about debate was the first presidential debate of 2012 between Mr Obama and Mr Romney, which prompted more than 10 million tweets. That record stood until this year’s second presidential debate, when more than 17 million debate-related tweets were sent.

Clinton officials said today’s debate format would lend itself to sharper exchanges than the town-hall setting of their second showdown, with the candidates behind podiums speaking to a moderator rather than to the audience.

The Wall Street Journal