The two most intensely disliked presidential candidates in American history are expected to draw a Super Bowl-size television audience when they meet for the first of three debates Monday night.

The drama of the live, 90-minute television event is assured with Donald Trump, the reality TV star who has blustered and bulldozed his way through conventional politics, and with a race that has narrowed enough in recent weeks to make this showdown seem like it could be the final pivotal point in this historic campaign.


Trump enters the first title bout as the de facto challenger, the fact-challenged, freewheeling outsider with far more command of the media and his own instincts as a performer than policy details. But he carries at least a semblance of momentum against a weak favorite who is viewed by the public as even less honest and trustworthy than him, according to a poll last week. This, despite data revealing roughly 70 percent of Trump’s statements to be demonstrably false.

Walking into the debate, polls show the race to be increasingly close, as Clinton’s national lead is down to 2 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls — a margin identical to Clinton’s advantage in an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Sunday morning.

That’s actually closer than the past two presidential races were headed into the first debates. In 2012, President Barack Obama led Mitt Romney by 3.1 points on the eve of their first debate in Denver, according to the RealClearPolitics average. And Obama led John McCain by 4.2 points before they met for the first time at Ole Miss in 2008.

The race is also tightening in the battleground states, polls show. With 44 days to go, Trump has pulled ahead in Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio, and is virtually even in Florida and Nevada. And even in some states where the averages favor Clinton — Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — recent polls show a tighter contest.

It all amounts to a significant improvement for Trump — a rebound that many analysts said was impossible after he sank like a stone in August following a dystopian coronation at the Republican National Convention and the ill-conceived challenge of a morally resolute Muslim Gold Star family who had trashed him on the Democrats’ nomination stage.

Trump’s recovery began three weeks ago, with a new management team and a more focused message. But he has mainly benefited from Clinton's stumbles: her display of physical weakness when her legs gave out on a hot Manhattan morning as she was suffering from pneumonia, and her inopportune comment at a private fundraiser where she said half of Trump's supporters belonged in a "basket of deplorables."

Still, he remains the underdog as Clinton leads nationally and maintains an easier path to 270 electoral votes.

"If the election were tomorrow, she would be elected," said Steve Schmidt. A GOP strategist who guided McCain's 2008 campaign, Schmidt says Monday's debate could have an "enormous impact" on the outcome of what's become a closer race.

"Donald Trump needs to make a case for change, but issues of temperament and judgment linger. His goal is to emerge on the other side of these three debates as someone the American people can see sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office talking to Americans in time of crisis. Is he going to seem plausible as a commander in chief?"

Americans are expected to tune in Monday night in large numbers. The debate will air on all four major broadcast networks and on every cable-news station as well. According to the ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday, nearly three-quarters of adult Americans, 74 percent, plan to watch the debate. Only 22 percent say they don’t think they’ll watch.



Trump, who has gone nearly two months without holding a news conference and turned down television interviews with all but friendly Fox journalists and a few local stations, is unlikely to continue to avoid questions about his disproven claims of charitable giving, pay-to-play allegations surrounding his contribution to Florida’s attorney general just before she closed a fraud investigation around Trump university and his stubborn refusal to release any tax returns. A master of media manipulation who has benefited from the public’s short attention span and inability to process a flood of information that would likely devastate a more traditional candidate, Trump is already contemplating a news conference next week as a way to change the subject after the first debate, according to two campaign sources.

And yet, the pressure may be on Clinton, who has dozens of debates under her belt and has spent far more time than Trump preparing for this one. She has long been viewed as the front-runner in this general election match-up. Monday night is a prime opportunity for her to stop the bleeding — to stir the passions of the Obama coalition, to reel in disaffected swing voters who have yet to migrate to Trump but seemed to take safe harbor for now in the possibility of a third-party option and, perhaps most importantly, to assuage the creeping doubts of her steadfast supporters.

“The worst enemy in any political campaign is doubt,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP consultant in Washington. “It’s what dries up fundraising and dampens the energy of volunteers, and the Clinton campaign has become gripped with doubt. It can be poisonous once it seeps into the bloodstream of a campaign, and you have to find a way to cleanse it. For her, the first, best opportunity to do that is Monday night. She really needs to win.”

Both campaigns have been preparing intensely, although in different ways. Clinton has decamped to Chappaqua to pore over policy points and engage in mock debates, with close confidant Philippe Reines playing the role of Trump. While Trump and his team insist he’s not preparing in such a conventional way, he has been huddled with advisers, including former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, discussing strategy, rehearsing lines of emphasis and studying a data analysis of Clinton’s many debate performances to familiarize himself with her tendencies.

Clinton, too, has invested in data analytics and psychological research to help determine how she might bait Trump into a bad moment on the stage, although communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters on a conference call Friday that Clinton is more focused on the positive message she wants to communicate to voters than on baiting her opponent.

“How Donald Trump behaves and whether or not he maintains a calm demeanor, that’s up to him. And we think that is within his power, so I’d not describe that as something we spend a lot of time on,” she said.

Asked about Trump using "psychological analysis" to prep for Clinton, Palmieri replied, “Good luck is what I would say in response. We all have seen [Clinton] endure a lot of tough questioning over the years. We saw her endure 11 hours of tough questioning at the Benghazi hearing. And Donald Trump may think he’s the person who’s going to be able to really get under her skin, but I doubt it.”

But with so much of the electorate seemingly decided on a candidate, with perceptions of both Trump and Clinton so hardened and with the electoral map essentially unchanged despite mild fluctuations in the polls, Monday's main event may also prove to be more of a cultural flashpoint than a political one.

Steven Shepard contributed to this report.