The third presidential debate – as it happened

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When is the debate? Like the previous two presidential debates, tonight’s debate starts at 9pm ET and is scheduled to run for 90 minutes without commercial interruption. (Other interruptions, however, are inevitable.)

Who is participating? Aside from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, you mean? Fox News anchor Chris Wallace - the first anchor from that network to host a presidential debate - will moderate tonight’s engagement. For a network that has been embroiled in scandal that brought down its chief executive, Wallace’s position is an opportunity to hit the reset button on a miserable year - although Trump’s willingness to feud with Fox News personalities means that Wallace will not be protected from onstage criticism from the candidate just because he’s besties with Sean Hannity.

What is the format? The debate will consist of six 15-minute segments, following the same format as the first presidential debate. Each segment will be approximately 15 minutes long. Wallace will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. Clinton and Trump will then have an opportunity to respond to each other. Wallace may use the balance of the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic. Those topics, as revealed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, are as follows:

• Debt and entitlements
• Immigration
• The economy
• Supreme Court
• Foreign hot spots
• Fitness to be president

Where is the debate being held? The debate is being held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which means that the journalists covering the debate are going to come home broke and hung over (they’ve earned it, trust me).

How do I watch the misery? That’s the easy part! The debate will be broadcast on the three major networks, as well as the cable news networks and C-SPAN. For those watching on their phones at the gym or on their laptops in their fallout shelters, Facebook will stream ABC News’s coverage and Twitter will stream the debates in partnership with Bloomberg.

The increasingly bitter presidential campaign and Donald Trump’s refusal to follow protocol has claimed another victim, this time in the form of the pre-debate handshake between candidates’ spouses.

According to the New York Times, the ritual of Bill Clinton and Melania Trump crossing the stage and shaking hands before the debate’s beginning was likely scuttled after the Clinton campaign responded to Trump’s attempts in the second presidential debate to seat three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual impropriety in his family box, which would mean the former president of the United States shaking hands with women who have accused him of sexual assault on national television.

This time, the Clintons aren’t horsing around:

But the Clinton side is not taking any chances at the final presidential debate, on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, and has apparently gained approval of a different protocol for the entry of the candidates’ spouses and families into the debate hall.

Hillary for America is making a bid for national unity in the campaign’s latest advertisement, A Place for Everyone - part of what the campaign is characterizing as its “closing argument.”

Narrated by Hillary Clinton, the ad splices together footage of diverse Americans performing everyday tasks while the former secretary of state intones that her “vision of America is an America where everyone has a place.”

Donald Trump may be a nightmare for fans of logic, justice and the English language. But he’s a godsend for any writer out to capture a character you can’t ignore.

Small wonder so many songwriters signed on to 30 Days, 30 Songs, a kind of sonic pop-up project that has been delivering a new message of protest every 24 hours for the entire month leading up to the election. Each piece means to offer a different view of the mother of all reality show stunts: the Trump campaign.

Nine have been released so far, together swirling a cocktail of wit, vitriol and apoplexy. Not every participant in this project wrote a song to order. Josh Ritter’s The Temptation of Adam first turned up on an album nearly a decade ago, while Jim James’s Same Old Lies already served as the first single off his forthcoming solo album. For yesterday’s release, REM retro-fitted a song from nearly 20 years ago. It’s a live version of World Leader Pretend, a song whose megalomaniacal, wall-building narrator originally served as a metaphor for a self-involved lover. Subbing in Trump proves not that big a leap.

Siren: A new poll from the Arizona Republic shows Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leading in the Grand Canyon state by five points - yes, you read that correctly.

Clinton has won the support of 39% of likely Arizona voters, according to the poll, while Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is supported by a dismal (for a Republican in Arizona) 33.9%. An additional 20% of Arizona voters are undecided.

This latest poll only adds more credit to the theory that Arizona’s shifting demographics may put the state in play, considered a fantasy for most of the 2016 campaign. The idea that blood-red Arizona’s 11 electoral votes could be up for grabs has inspired a flurry of campaign spending and surrogate placement by the Clinton campaign this week, with more than $2m in advertisements purchased and first lady Michelle Obama set to address a Phoenix campaign rally tomorrow afternoon.

For more on Arizona’s purple-ish possibilities, The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reported from Phoenix:

During the third and final US presidential debate tonight, the Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab will send experimental notifications with real-time reactions and live fact-checks from Guardian US reporters and editors.

These notifications are separate from the breaking news alerts sent through the Guardian mobile app, and you don’t have to be an app user to take part in this experiment.

Please take the follow-up survey we’ll send out following the experiment. Your feedback is important to us, and will inform our future work.

Looks like Donald Trump is getting his wall after all.

In anticipation of tonight’s final presidential debate, the Culinary Workers Union is building a wall of taco trucks outside Trump International Hotel, miles away from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s campus – the setting for the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The rally aims to have at least five taco trucks as well as a giant banner designed as a wall where members, organizers and participants will be able to write messages and sign their names. While approximately 400 people are expected to rally in the morning on the Las Vegas strip, the trucks will be handing out free tacos in order to support the protest. The union has been using Twitter and other social media platforms as they promote their #WallOfTacos and #TacosOnEveryCorner event, hoping to make some noise before the debate.

They will be joined by representatives from Plan Action, Latino Victory Project, iAmerica, Center for Community Change Action, For Our Future, and 50 immigrant advocacy activists from Los Angeles. The Democrat Ruben Kihuen – who is running to represent the fourth congressional district in the House – will also speak at the rally.

“We’re protesting Donald Trump’s hotel here in Vegas, where a majority of workers voted to unionize,” said Kihuen. “Trump has failed to sit down at the table with them.”

In an “exclusive” interview with The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert, “Melania Trump” - who suspiciously looks like Broadway star Laura Benanti - appeared via satellite to clear the air around Donald Trump’s most recent controversies.

Marco Rubio has declared that, unlike many other members of his party, he will not answer any questions relating to emails hacked by the Russian government and released by WikiLeaks:

I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks. As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it. Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. tomorrow it could be us.

Looks like somebody took the Miami Herald editorial calling him “a disappointment” to heart.

Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s campaign liveblog.

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With a mere 20 days until election day, the bleary eyes of a campaign-weary nation are aimed squarely at Las Vegas, where the third and final presidential debate between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump is set to begin in 12 hours.

In the nine days since the two candidates last met, the polling gap between Clinton and Trump has yawned ever wider, after 10 women came forward with allegations that Trump had sexually assaulted them in incidents stretching back decades. Trump’s response - that the accusers were Clinton plants with the goal of “rigging” the upcoming election - may have appeased some of his supporters, but a late-breaking survey from Fox News last night shows just how far the Republican presidential nominee’s chances of victory in November have fallen:

• Clinton has a 6-point national lead over Trump, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg ...
• The poll, one of the first to be conducted entirely after the full slate of Trump’s accusers came forward, shows Clinton leading among women by 7 points.
• Whites with a college degree, long a Republican bloc, favor Clinton by 9 points.
• Voters believe, by a two-to-one margin, that Trump committed at least some of the sexual assaults of which he has been accused.
• Clinton leads on every single issue, minus the economy, as well as on qualifying attributes like temperament, judgment and making decisions about the use of nuclear weapons.

So how does this affect tonight?

Tonight’s debate may be Trump’s last opportunity to salvage the dwindling support that in recent weeks has seemingly placed the election increasingly out of the Republican nominee’s reach - and if we’ve learned anything about Trump over the past 16 months, it’s that he’s at his most vicious when backed into a corner. Repetitions of his baseless claims of voter fraud to assert that the election is “rigged”, as well as continued references to Bill Clinton’s past personal scandals, are a given.

Clinton, unflappable in the second debate even as Trump invited women who have accused her husband of sexually predatory behavior, is unlikely to take the bait.

“We understand the strategy that he is trying to do to explain his loss and also to try to deter voters,” said Jenn Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, “[but] we believe that it’s going to be easier to vote than ever before.”