The Commission on Presidential Debates has denied President Trump’s request for an extra debate to be held before states begin their early voting.
According to The Daily Wire:
The Commission on Presidential Debates shut down the Trump campaign’s request to either add an extra debate before the first early-voting ballot are cast, or to move one of the three debates to the first week of September.
Trump raised the debate date issue last Friday during an interview on Fox News, in which he pointed out that the first debate is scheduled for late September: “Why are they putting the first debate so late? The first debate should be before the first – at least before the first ballots go out. And they have it a month later, almost a month later. It’s ridiculous.”
But the commission seems to have taken issue with the campaign’s suggestion that as many as 8 million American voters may start early voting before the first presidential debate is held on Sept. 29.
“There is a difference between ballots having been issued by a state and those ballots having been cast by voters, who are under no compulsion to return their ballots before the debates. In 2016, when the debate schedule was similar, only .0069% of the electorate had voted at the time of the first debate,” said the debate commission in its own letter responding to the Trump campaign.
However, Trump has received good news in that he is closing the polling gap between him and candidate Joe Biden.
The latest RealClearPolitics national polling average, though, shows Trump trailing Biden by just over six points, compared with nine points a month ago.
More significantly, the race is tightening in some key swing states.
In Florida, Biden is leading by four points, according to the RCP average, down from roughly eight points in late July.
And Trump is also seeing a tightening in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, trailing Biden by roughly five points in each — though the needle has not moved much in Michigan.
President Trump’s campaign manager has cited his daily coronavirus briefings as making a big difference.
President Trump has a long way to go, but these signs are encouraging even before Biden and Trump have graced a debate stage together.
