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Candidate Joe Biden salutes supporters at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention in Manchester on September 7, 2019. REUTERS / Gretchen Ertl

Five months from the start of the primaries in February, the top ten Democratic candidates will compete on the same set this Thursday evening, September 12, for a televised debate organized by ABC. This is the first to bring together only favorites, including the best placed, for the moment, Joe Biden and Elisabeth Warren.

With our correspondent in San Francisco, Eric de Salve

For the first time are meeting on the same board, the favorite polls Joe Biden and his main competitor Elisabeth Warren . Two septuagenarians for two visions of the Democratic Party. One resolutely leftist and progressive, the other more centrist and traditional.

On stage, 76-year-old Joe Biden will also be in the middle, between the 70-year-old senator and the other historical figure on the left wing, 78-year-old Bernie Sanders , who is currently third in the league. surveys. His two rivals are trying to steer the more left-wing debates on economic and health insurance issues, so they risk a joint front against Barack Obama's former vice president.

For Joe Biden, the stakes are huge. The first debates sometimes showed him in difficulty . He lost points when black Senator Kamala Harris asked him about his ties to elected segregationists when he was a senator in the 1970s.

Joe Biden, also subscribed to the gaffes, nicknamed " Joe the sleeping " by Trump, will have to hold without fail the three hours of this televised marathon debate. The veteran of American politics will also have to resist the other seven candidates.

But since the start of the campaign, the former vice president, whose main promise is to beat Donald Trump, holds firmly with nearly 30% pole position in the polls.

See also: Democratic primary in the United States: Sanders and Warren targeted by their rivals