Tonight’s VP debate kicks off the home stretch of the 2024 election

Tonight, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) will face off in the first vice presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle.

As it currently stands, the VP debate also represents the last major prime-time campaign event before the election takes place in 35 days, with no other debates currently on the docket.

The rules for tonight’s event are similar to the previous presidential debates, with two key exceptions:

1. Microphones won’t be muted when the other candidate is speaking
2. Moderators won’t be live fact-checking the candidates

The VP debate comes as both presidential candidates are hot on the campaign trail. In a series of speeches across several battleground states over the past week, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris touted their separate policy proposals and threw barbs at each other, largely over the topic of immigration.

• Trump blamed Harris for America’s problems with crime and immigration – two of the most important issues to US voters currently – and highlighted his own proposals to enhance border security.
• Harris vowed to keep the Biden admin's strict restrictions on asylum claims for migrants if elected, and denounced Trump’s opposition to a bipartisan border package in Congress earlier this year.

Polling update: Harris is currently leading Trump by a slight margin in polling aggregators from RealClearPolitics (+2.0%), FiveThirtyEight (+2.8%), and The Hill/Decision Desk HQ (+4.2%). However, Trump is projected to defeat Harris by a 281-257 margin in the Electoral College based on individual state polls in recent weeks, per RCP.