Definition of "challenger"

Debates are often unpredictable, but it is especially hard to game out how this debate featuring a moderate standard-bearer and a liberal challenger will unfold and how people will process it. Hundreds of thousands of viewers, if not millions, will have been personally affected by Sunday, as public gathering spaces are shuttered, schools are closed and on Thursday the stock market plunged by the largest percentage in decades (it snapped back upward on Friday).

2020, Shane Goldmacher, “Throw Out the Debate Playbook: Biden and Sanders to Clash Amid Crisis”, in The New York Times‎