The upcoming debate in St. Louis will provide some new challenges for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The debate will have a completely different set up than before - a "town hall" debate where the candidates will be answering their questions from a different source than the moderator.
"With the town hall meeting, you'll have both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and they will be taking questions from the audience," said Jennifer Walton. "The audience is supposed to be made up of undecided voters."
Jennifer Walton is the associate professor of Communication Studies at Ohio Northern University, and she believes that those undecided voters’might be made up differently than in years past: "I've really questioned how many undecided voters we actually have in this election - I think the decision is whether people are going to vote or not; I don't think that they're going to decide to between Trump and Clinton, I think that they're going to decided if they're going to vote at all," Walton said.
As for the candidates themselves, Walton looked Donald Trump’s behavior in the last debate to make predictions of how he may act in the debate coming up.
"Donald Trump doesn't do well with surprises and there's no way to know what the audience is going to ask, so I think we're going to see how quickly he can think on his feet," said Walton. "He wears his feelings on his sleeves so you know when he's been agitated, you know when someone has gotten under his skin, and he's going to have to manage that non-verbally. We'll really get to see a new side of Donald Trump."
And for Hillary Clinton, Walton says that Clinton's past experience with the town hall setting might work in her favor.
"She's been doing this for years - they instituted the town hall debate in 1992 when her husband Bill was running the first time," Walton said. "I've heard from anybody who's met her one-on-one that she makes you feel like you're the only person in the room, and that is very important in a town hall debate."
Walton says that both candidates will need to prepare for the unexpected questions that might come from such a diverse audience. The debate aired Sunday at 9 p.m.
