2012 United States presidential debates
debates held to contrast the 2012 US presidential candidates
The 2012 United States presidential debates were a series of debates held during the 2012 presidential election.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a bipartisan organization formed in 1987, organized four debates among the major party candidates, sponsored three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate. Only Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney met the criteria for inclusion in the debates, and thus were the only two to appear in the debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The CPD-sponsored vice presidential debate took place between their respective vice presidential running mates, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.
The CPD stipulates three criteria for eligibility: constitutionally eligible, appearance on enough ballots to potentially reach 270 electoral votes, and average at least 15% on five selected national polls. Obama and Romney satisfied all requirements to participate. The moderators for the debates were announced on August 13, 2012.
All four debates took place between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. EDT. Subsequently, on October 3, both campaigns executed a memorandum of understanding governing technical and administrative details of the debate.
The public source identifies “2012 United States presidential debates” as debates held to contrast the 2012 US presidential candidates. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around United, States and presidential.
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This entry incorporates text from “2012 United States presidential debates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.