Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

The top seven Democratic presidential candidates will appear on stage in Los Angeles Thursday night in the sixth debate of the year.

The debate comes just one day after President Trump became the third president of the United States 

to be impeached by the House of Representatives

December Democratic debate

8 p.m. ET and last around three hours. It is co-hosted by 

 and Politico and will take place at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The debate will be televised on PBS and CNN, livestreamed online at 

, and available on many of the news organizations' social, mobile and live-TV streaming apps. You can also listen to the debate on SiriusXM channels 116, 454, and 795.

 will also be streaming special coverage of the debate, and the politics team will provide live fact-checking and analysis throughout the evening. You can also subscribe to 

 for a debate recap and analysis afterward.

 for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary as the Democratic National Committee continues to raise the polling and fundraising thresholds to qualify. 

Who is moderating and what is the format?

The debate will be moderated by Judy Woodruff, anchor of 

; Amna Nawaz, PBS senior national correspondent; and Yamiche Alcindor, PBS White House correspondent. They will also be joined by Politico's chief political correspondent, Tim Alberta. 

, the debate will not feature any candidate opening statements, and there will be three designated breaks throughout the event.

Get caught up: What's happened since the last round? 

Former New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg 

 in late November. Just over a week later on Dec. 3, Sen. Kamala Harris of California 

, surprising many as one of the higher-profile candidates in the race. 

Harris had qualified for Thursday's debate but ended her campaign because of inadequate fundraising.

Shortly after Harris' withdrawal, the hashtags #

 and #DebateSoWhite were used to criticize the anticipated debate for featuring almost exclusively white candidates. Andrew Yang, who is Asian American, qualified for the deba

Several candidates who did not qualify for the debate — including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro — have spent the past few weeks publicly 

campaigning against the DNC's new requirements

, arguing that the new rules are too restrictive and limit potential voices of color on the stage.

Meanwhile, Biden maintains a national lead at 24 percent, followed closely by Sanders at 22 percent, Warren at 17 percent and Buttigieg at 13 percent, according to the latest 

The same polling shows a continually growing gap between those candidates and the rest of the contenders — with Yang next at 5 percent and Klobuchar, Bloomberg and Booker at 4 percent. 

For a time, it was unclear whether any of them would make it to the stage.

The debate comes on the heels of a newly settled labor dispute between the food-service workers at the school and their contracting company Sodexo, a fight that prompted 

all seven candidates to threaten to boycott

 the event in solidarity with the workers. 

, and the debate will remain at Loyola Marymount University.

More NPR reporting you don't want to miss

On Dec. 6, NPR's Rachel Martin sat down with Biden for 

 with an Iowa voter over his son's involvement on the board of Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

 — where presidential candidates discuss various policies with affected voters — and 

 with candidates from NPR's politics team in The NPR Politics Podcast's 

Politics and Government News

Election 2020

Elena Moore

Author

The sixth Democratic primary debate, which begins at 7 p.m., features the smallest — and least diverse — group of candidates yet.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Participate In Last Debate Of 2019

Democratic debate: What you need to know about Thursday's faceoff

Go Deeper.

Like this?