Second presidential debate aims to bring audiences closer to candidates

Everything is ready at the Tijuana Campus of the Autonomous University of Baja California for the second presidential debate .

Undecided citizens will differentiate this Sunday's event from any other debate in the past, given that for the first time, an audience of 42 undecided potential voters will be posing questions to the candidates running for President of Mexico .

This new format will allow the candidates to move around the forum so they can get closer to the audience and reply to their questions.

Under the direction of moderatos, active conversations are expected to take place without candidates being ignored or not replying.

This is a move expected to draw larger audiences, especially that of undecided voters which are estimated to represent at least 20% of all Mexican voters, 42 days ahead of election day.

According to the National Electoral Institute (INE), the first presidential debate was seen by 11.4 million in TV and 7.1 million online.

Audience rankings for the second debate aren't expected to surpass those of the first, and even the INE itself didn't advertise it as broadly as the first. Moreover, it will be broadcast at 21:30 GMT-5 so the schedule doesn't overlap with the Mexican football match Toluca-Santos, which will be played at 19:00 GMT-5.

This time around, the moderators will be journalists Yuriria Sierra and León Krauze and independent candidate Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (El Bronco) is set to open and close the debate, after fellow independent candidate Margarita Zavala made official her resignation on May 17.

The topics to be discussed during this second debate are: foreign trade and investment, border security, transnational organized crime, and migrant rights.

The first segment will consist of 20-minute sections beginning with a question by a member of the audience, to be answered by all candidates. The second segment will feature 10-minute debates, also prompted by a question by a member of the audience and the opportunity of candidates to give a speech.

One minute will be granted for closing arguments per candidate.

Fact-checking the first presidential debate

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