Will a debate be held between Joe Biden and Donald Trump before the 2024 US presidential election?
Resolves the same as the original on Metaculus.
Resolution criteria
This question will resolve as Yes if, before November 5, 2024, Joe Biden and Donald Trump participate in a live debate for presidential candidates, including a virtual debate.
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Unless RFK's polling numbers decline, there will be no debates this year.
Biden already didn't want to give Trump a platform to turn things into a circus, like he did last time when he exposed Biden to COVID-19 and constantly interrupted him. Now that RFK is eligible for the debates, they should both fear him taking the lead like Perot did.
@SteveSokolowski Counterargument: Biden (or Trump if RFK starts getting more left-wing support) will very much want to give RFK a platform, in order to take votes away from the other side. There's precedent for this kind of thing: In 1980, independent candidate Anderson was polling 20%, and Carter (concerned that Anderson would take votes away from him) refused to participate in any debate Anderson was present in. Reagan, however, did debate him. Reagan did very well in the debate, and Anderson's numbers dropped from there, but still probably helped Reagan's landslide victory (winning 44 states) over Carter.
Trump presumably also knows that staying out of the debate entirely would have an even worse outcome than participating.
For anyone who hasn't seen, this is spiking because Trump just posted that he wants to debate Biden "anytime, anywhere". I've added this question to the new 2024 Debates Dashboard.
Dates and places for the 2024 debates were already announced by the Commission on Presidential Debates in November 2023, so it seems now that it's just a matter of whether the two candidates will actually agree to participate. There have also been debates in every election since 1976 according to English Wikipedia so an exception this year seems also unlikely.