The Democratic debates are finally here and all eyes are going to be on the candidates tonight. But just how much time do you need to put aside for the debates tonight? Here are the details you need to know.
Tonight marks the first of two back-to-back Democratic debates. The debate tonight will be two hours long, beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern and ending at 11 p.m. Eastern.
So that means the debate is essentially going to be the same length as a feature movie, not including commercials. So you’ll want to set aside quite a bit of time for the debates.
And of course, it’s likely that any news station you turn to after the debate is over will have plenty of recaps and reviews of the debate. So if you’re planning to host a watch party for this debate, then you might want to budget some time for an after-show too.
For example, after tonight’s debate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And Terry Crews and Anthony Jeselnik will appear on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
You can also watch Perry Bacon Jr. (a writer for FiveThirtyEight) on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah after tonight’s debate.
Quite a few YouTube personalities will also be hosting after-shows. You can tune into The Young Turks to see their analysis of the debate on YouTube, for example.
The lineup for the first debate includes Cory Booker, Bill de Blasio, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan, and Elizabeth Warren.
The debate will be held at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. The moderators will be Savannah Guthrie, Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, and Jose Diaz-Balart.
After this, the next debates will be in Detroit on July 30 and 31. These will be hosted by CNN, but the format will be the same and we can expect mostly the same candidates to be in the debate. But before the debates in September, things will get a lot more stringent, as requirements to be in the debates will increase for both donations and polling.