ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — “I’m watching it. I’m watching it with great hope,” an Asheville woman said Thursday when asked if she had been keeping up with the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican challenger Donald Trump.

Harris and Trump have never met face-to-face, but that will change Tuesday in a 90-minute debate set to start at 9 p.m. and air on ABC News properties.

The meeting comes just over two months after President Joe Biden’s debate performance against Trump on June 27 triggered a political shakeup that propelled Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket.

UNC Asheville political science associate professor and co-chair Ashley Moraguez said Trump needs to stay on message if he wants to win the 2024 presidential election.

“Trump is not known for being a particularly disciplined messenger, but I think his tendency to veer off message has been more prominent since Harris became the Democratic nominee,” Moraguez said. “He should focus more on the policies and issues that affect his base and spend less time with personal attacks on Harris and other Democrats (and the occasional Republican). His campaign advisers have been recommending this, and I think he would benefit from listening to them.”

Moraguez thinks the Harris team would benefit from more television advertisements in key states.

“I think her ground game and social media presence have been impressive thus far, but television ads can be an important complement to those strategies,” Moraguez said. “I would also recommend that she continue spending time in swing states, like North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but that she focus a bit more on the rural areas in those states. While her strongest base of support will be in cities and she needs to increase turnout in those areas, she also needs to chip away at Trump’s margins in rural areas to win those states.”

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Race and gender are part of the race, too, as voters consider whether to make Harris the United States’ first female president. And then there’s the age difference. Harris, 59, is almost two decades younger than Trump, 78.

It comes down to the candidates.

Trump is able to connect with voters in a way that resonates and his ability to pitch himself as a political outsider, despite having served as president, Moraguez said. But he is also surrounded by political and legal controversies — 34 felony convictions, election fraud claims, mishandling classified documents, defamation and sexual assault.

Can Harris, a former district attorney and attorney general for California, can make a case against Trump?

“Voters feel like they still don’t have a strong sense of where she stands on many policy issues or a good sense of who she is,” Moraguez said. “So, she has to make up a lot of ground very quickly.”