What’s the Format of the First Presidential Debate?

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The first 2016 presidential debate will be held at Hofstra University on Long Island. (Getty)

On Monday, September 26th, the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will take place. What should viewers expect from the evening? What’s the format?

The presidential debate will be held from 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, presented without commercial interruption. It is being broadcast from Hofstra University on Long Island, and it will be moderated by NBC News’ Lester Holt.

According to the Commission on Presidential Debates’ website, Monday’s debate will consist of six sections, with each one focused on a particular topic. These segments will each be approximately 15 minutes long. The themes for the night are “achieving prosperity,” “securing America” and “America’s direction,” as decided by Lester Holt.

Every one of the six sections will begin with a question from Holt, and both candidates have exactly two minutes to answer it. They can also respond to one another, and Holt can ask followup questions as well. Depending on how long responses and followups take, the debate may or may not go over the scheduled time of one-and-a-half hours.

This is not the same format that will be used for all three debates, though. The second one, which will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, is a town hall, with half of the questions coming from uncommitted voters. The other half will come from the moderators, Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, but “based on topics of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources,” according to the commission’s website.

Facebook will be involved in that second debate, helping Cooper and Raddatz to gather questions. It is up to the moderators how these Facebook questions will be incorporated into the evening.

In the town hall, the candidates once again have two minutes each to respond to questions, and an additional minute will be allotted for followups from the moderators.

The third and final debate will be held at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and its format will be exactly the same as the first debate.

There will also be a vice presidential debate between Indiana Governor Mike Pence and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine on October 4th, with the format of that being nine segments, each consisting of 10 minutes.