The University of Notre Dame will host the first presidential debate ahead of the 2020 general election, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday.
The school is one of two Midwest universities to host presidential debates, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit commission. The first presidential debate, at the University of Notre Dame, will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, and the second presidential debate, at the University of Michigan, will be held on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020.
A third presidential debate will take place on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, at Belmont University, in Nashville. A vice presidential debate occurs Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, at the University of Utah.
Each debate will start at 8 p.m. CST and run for 90 minutes without commercials. Additional details, including format and moderators, will be announced in 2020.
Criteria for eligibility also were laid out by the commission.
"In addition to being Constitutionally eligible, candidates must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a majority vote in the Electoral College," the commission said in a statement, "and have a level of support of at least 15% of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recently publicly-reported results at the time of the determination."
