The pair, who have had sharp words for each other at a distance, will debate in close quarters at CBS event Tuesday

Tim Walz and JD Vance, the US Democratic and Republican candidates for vice-president, will face off on Tuesday in what is likely to be the last debate showdown between the two parties’ tickets before election day in exactly five weeks’ time.

The pair – who have had sharp words for each other at a distance – will engage in verbal combat in close quarters at a CBS-hosted event in New York, with the stakes raised by polling evidence that shows the contest between the two presidential nominees, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, poised on a knife edge.

Republican nominee’s proposal at Pennsylvania campaign rally compared to dystopian horror film The Purge

Donald Trump has been accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.

In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”.