Who's going to qualify for the Democratic debates?

[Mr. Morden]

https://apnews.com/96040a1e27f04f2f944dddcf2ed4a412

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So how is the grassroots fundraising metric going to work for candidates who are announcing later?  If a candidate enters the race in April, then they won't have any first quarter fundraising #s, so I guess their fundraising can't be counted towards inclusion in the June debate?

[Mr. Morden]

Vox elaborates on the polling measure:

https://www.vox.com/2019/2/14/18225341/dnc-tom-perez-debates-2020-president

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So, 1% or more in three polls (either nationally or in early primary states), but the polls have to be done by "major news organizations or qualifying universities".  Therefore, I don't think they'll be including polls from, say, Rasmussen or Morning Consult.  Rather, it'll be a similar mix of polls to the ones the RNC used for their debates four years ago (meaning, polls by the TV networks or the NYT, WSJ, etc., or by a few selected universities like Quinnipiac).  Anyone want to compile a leaderboard on this one just based on polls so far?

It sounds like, since both the polling measure and the fundraising measure is cumulative (meaning that what happens in February is just as important as what happens in May), these criteria offer a huge incentive for all the remaining prospective candidates to jump in the race ASAP.  Some of them aren't even being included in polls yet, but probably would if they announced they were running.  I guess Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke are in a strong enough position polling-wise that they don't have that same incentive.  But for a Hickenlooper or a McAuliffe or whoever, they should get in the race right now if they're going to do so, or they'll be wasting time that they could be using to reach one of these debate thresholds.

[Mr. Morden]

Vox elaborates on the polling measure:

https://www.vox.com/2019/2/14/18225341/dnc-tom-perez-debates-2020-president

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So, 1% or more in three polls (either nationally or in early primary states), but the polls have to be done by "major news organizations or qualifying universities".  Therefore, I don't think they'll be including polls from, say, Rasmussen or Morning Consult.  Rather, it'll be a similar mix of polls to the ones the RNC used for their debates four years ago (meaning, polls by the TV networks or the NYT, WSJ, etc., or by a few selected universities like Quinnipiac).  Anyone want to compile a leaderboard on this one just based on polls so far?

It sounds like, since both the polling measure and the fundraising measure is cumulative (meaning that what happens in February is just as important as what happens in May), these criteria offer a huge incentive for all the remaining prospective candidates to jump in the race ASAP.  Some of them aren't even being included in polls yet, but probably would if they announced they were running.  I guess Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke are in a strong enough position polling-wise that they don't have that same incentive.  But for a Hickenlooper or a McAuliffe or whoever, they should get in the race right now if they're going to do so, or they'll be wasting time that they could be using to reach one of these debate thresholds.

Actually quite a few candidates have already had 1+% in 3 Morning Consult polls this year, including Hickenlooper.

I doubt they'll include Morning Consult polls though.  "Major news organizations or qualifying universities" will probably be applied in a way that doesn't include them.

[Mr. Morden]

My hunch is that the DNC won’t count polls from, say, Morning Consult or Zogby.  The only poll from this year so far that I’ll bet they do count is the Monmouth national poll, from Jan. 25-27:

Wikipedia link

Here are all the candidates (or potential candidates) who got at least 1% in that poll:

Biden
Bloomberg
Booker
Brown
Castro
Gabbard
Gillibrand
Harris
Hickenlooper
Holder
Klobuchar
O’Rourke
Sanders
Warren
Yang

So that’s 15 candidates (or potentials) getting 1% in one poll so far.  Of course, presumably not all of those people are going to run.  But these folks are in the “lead” for making it into the debate right now, *if* this is the only poll that currently counts.

But it’s possible that Emerson and/or Harvard-Harris will make it in too.  They’re both university-sponsored polls, so the guidelines suggest they’re possibles.  But Emerson is a robopollster, and Harvard-Harris is online.  So my guess is that they won’t count, but I’m not sure.  Here’s the list of those getting at least 1% in those polls (including one from Iowa, and the DNC said early state polls count too):

Emerson (robocall), Jan. 20-21:
Biden
Bloomberg
Booker
Brown
Castro
Delaney
Gabbard
Gillibrand
Harris
Klobuchar
O’Rourke
Sanders
Warren

Harvard-Harris (online), Jan. 15-16:
Biden
Bloomberg
Booker
Castro
Gabbard
Gillibrand
Harris
O’Rourke
Sanders
Warren

Iowa: Emerson (robocall), Jan. 30 - Feb. 2:
Biden
Booker
Brown
Castro
Delaney
Gillibrand
Harris
Klobuchar
O’Rourke
Sanders
Warren

So if all of those polls were to count, then the current leaderboard would be:
Biden 4
Booker 4
Castro 4
Gillibrand 4
Harris 4
O’Rourke 4
Sanders 4
Warren 4
Bloomberg 3
Brown 3
Gabbard 3
Klobuchar 3
Delaney 2
Hickenlooper 1
Holder 1
Yang 1

So, if all four of those polls were to count, then Biden, Booker, Castro, Gillibrand, Harris, O’Rourke, Sanders, Warren, Bloomberg, Brown, Gabbard, and Klobuchar have already qualified, though those from that list who haven’t formally launched their candidacy would still need to do so.  Of the declared / exploratory candidates, Buttigieg stands as the one person who hasn’t made it to 1% in any of these polls (though it’s still super early).  Is he in as much danger (or more danger) of being left out of the first debate as Yang is?

Also of note: Of those four polls, Gillibrand is at 1% in three of them, and 2% in the fourth one.  So she's polling poorly, but still managing to consistently make it to 1% as opposed to 0% (at least in non-Morning Consult polls).  And that's good enough for the DNC.  But it doesn't leave much margin for error.  Gabbard is on a similar 1/2% bubble, though she didn't make it in one of the four polls.

[Mr. Morden]

I was also curious about the fundraising criteria: “Donations from at least 65,000 unique donors and a minimum of 200 unique donors per state in at least 20 US states.”  How hard is that to do?  I don’t have any comprehensive list in front of me, but here’s a thread on the Q2 2015 fundraising #s, which mention, for a few of the GOP candidates, how many unique donors they had:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=215395.0

We mention, for example, that in that quarter, Carson raised $8.3 million from 150,000 donors, Cruz raised $10 million from 120,000 donors, and Paul raised $7 million from 108,000 donors.

So getting 65,000 donors in one quarter seems very doable, but I’d guess that some of last cycle’s kiddie table candidates, like Jindal and Pataki, probably didn’t manage it.  My guess is that many candidates who can’t manage to get 1% in three polls will not be able to be bailed out by their fundraising #s.

And this underlines how crazy it now is for so many 2nd / 3rd tier candidates to stay on the sidelines, and delay their decision for another month or two.  If you don’t get into the race until the end of March, then you don’t even have a full quarter of fundraising before you have to qualify if the debate is in early June (we don’t yet know when in June it’ll be).  So if Merkley or Swalwell or whoever are really still undecided, they need to figure it out fast and declare one way or the other ASAP.  And Bullock’s talk of waiting until May before declaring now seems insane.  If he sticks to that, then he’s probably not going to be invited to the debate.

[Mr. Morden]

If anyone can find a story that states how many unique donors Delaney and Yang have so far, please post it here.  I'm curious to know if the fact that they've already been in the race so long might put them within striking distance of qualifying already.

[Mr. Morden]

You know, comparing the national Dem. primary polling this time around to the GOP primary polling from four years ago:

2020 Wiki link
2016 Wiki link

It looks like we may have really nosedived in terms of the number of polls that the party committee might plausibly include in determining debate inclusion.  I guess this isn't all that apparent if you only look at Jan. / early Feb., because there was a similar dearth of quality polls in that timeframe four years ago.  But earlier than that, in late 2014, there were polls by CNN, ABC/WaPo, Fox News, McClatchy/Marist, and Quinnipiac.  Then those firms mostly took a break in the first couple of months of 2015 before coming back in March/April.

This time though, we had CNN in December, but where's Fox?  Where's Marist?  Where's Quinnipiac?  We did have an ABC/WaPo poll recently, but it didn't prompt the respondents with a list of names, so no one except the most well known candidates got any support in it.  These firms aren't polling so far, even though the candidates have been declaring several months earlier than normal this time.

Are these firms going to come out with some polls in March/April/May or not?  If not, then that could really limit the number of candidates who qualify for the debates by getting 1% in three polls, because I don't see the DNC counting polls from Morning Consult, McLaughlin, Rasmussen, Zogby, etc.  OTOH, if those firms that the DNC will count do give us a slew of polls, then >15 candidates qualifying for the debates is very plausible.  Even a candidate with only half a percentage point of support will get 1% in some polls just by chance....if you include him/her in enough polls.

[Mr. Morden]

Yang looks like he could actually hit the threshold by June? Maybe?

Which threshold?  The donor one?  He's been running since 2017, so if he's only now hitting 20,000 donors, then I'm skeptical of him making it to 65,000 by the end of May.  Maybe he could hit the polling threshold instead if the pollsters actually included him, but most of them don't.  Though maybe if/when we start to get more polls from the higher quality pollsters, they'll include everyone who's declared, just to be fair.

[Mr. Morden]

Let’s add the ABC/WaPo poll from January (which didn’t prompt respondents for a choice, but just let them come up with the names on their own) and now the latest Emerson national (Feb. 14-16) and Emerson NH (Feb. 21-22) polls.  Adding those to the others ones, the standings (# of polls in which someone got 1% or more) would be:

Biden 7
Harris 7
O’Rourke 7
Sanders 7
Warren 7
Booker 6
Gillibrand 6
Bloomberg 5
Brown 5
Castro 5
Klobuchar 5
Gabbard 4
Delaney 3
———qualification line———
Buttigieg 1
Hickenlooper 1
Holder 1
Yang 1

So if we use what I think is the most permissive of standards for which polls might realistically be used by the DNC to determine inclusion, then Delaney, for example, is already in.  But I’m really uncertain about whether they’re going to count university polls that don’t use a live interviewer.  Take all the Emerson polls out, and there are very few left at the moment.  Really curious to see if we actually get many higher quality polls in the next three months.  I would think we should, but I don’t know.  We’ll see.

[Mr. Morden]

The DNC press release gives more details on qualifying pollsters:

Polling Method: Register 1% or more support in three polls (which may be national polls, or polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and/or Nevada) publicly released between January 1, 2019, and 14 days prior to the date of the Organization Debate.  Qualifying polls will be limited to those sponsored by one or more of the following organizations/institutions:Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Des Moines Register, Fox News, Las Vegas Review Journal, Monmouth University, NBC News, New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), Quinnipiac University, Reuters, University of New Hampshire, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Winthrop University.  Any candidate’s three qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations, or if by the same organization, must be in different geographical areas.

That is super clarifying, thank you.  So I guess Emerson and Harvard/Harris aren’t going to count then.  Which means, I think, we only have three qualifying polls from the last 2 months:

Monmouth, ABC/WaPo (the methodology was unusual with the open question, but I guess it’ll count), and UNH

So then the actual standings would now be:

Biden 3
Harris 3
O’Rourke 3
Sanders 3
Warren 3
———qualification line———
Booker 2
Brown 2
Gabbard 2
Gillibrand 2
Klobuchar 2
Bloomberg 1
Buttigieg 1
Castro 1
Hickenlooper 1
Holder 1
Yang 1

We still have at least another 2.5 months to go, and one would assume that the rate of polls from these pollsters would pick up, but it looks like these organizations are not polling nearly as much as four years ago, leaving it to outfits like Morning Consult and Zogby to pick up the slack.  Given that, it wouldn’t surprise me if no one ends up getting in on the polling threshold who wouldn’t have made it on the donor threshold anyway.  But I’ll keep tracking this nonetheless.

[Mr. Morden]

So is there at all a chance that, like, Castro misses the debates? If he’s only one of three...

The ABC/WaPo poll had the unusual open question format and the UNH poll was one of the few polls out there that didn't list Castro as an option.  But almost every poll that includes Castro as an option has him getting 1% or so.  So I think he's very likely to make it via the remaining polls over the next 2.5 months.  Or if not, he can probably manage to qualify by reaching the donor threshold.

The potential candidates who seem the least likely to make it are folks like Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, and Steve Bullock, who are talking about not announcing until April or later (and then you've got Bennet, who's not giving any timeframe at all), and are not included as an option in almost any poll, and presumably won't be until they officially get in.  Plus if they're entering that late, then they probably won't make it to 65,000 donors in time.

[Mr. Morden]

It looks like only three polls that the DNC will actually count have been conducted so far.  Of those, this is the number of those three that various candidates managed 1% in:

Biden 3
Harris 3
O’Rourke 3
Sanders 3
Warren 3
———qualification line———
Booker 2
Brown 2
Gabbard 2
Gillibrand 2
Klobuchar 2
Bloomberg 1
Buttigieg 1
Castro 1
Hickenlooper 1
Holder 1 I guess he's not running now.
Yang 1

Obviously, there will be at least a few more since we have at least 2.5 months to go, but maybe not as many as folks were previously imagining.  It looks like many of the higher quality pollsters have not been polling this cycle so far.  And note that the criteria say a candidate can't count two polls from the same pollster, so if Monmouth releases another poll, then candidates getting 1% in the last one and the next one can't count both polls separately.

[Mr. Morden]

Honestly the 1% threshold seems low, I'd be more comfortable with 2%. A lot of times that percent could be just statistical noise. I think it should be in the DNC's best interest to cull the number of nonserious candidates.

These criteria aren't going to stay the same for every debate.  From Perez's initial comments on this, it sounded like it would probably only be the June and July debates that would have criteria like this, and after that it would get more strict.  It wouldn't surprise me if by the third debate, they're no longer splitting it up between two nights, and it's just a single debate of the top 10 candidates.

[Mr. Morden]

Possibly everyone except for Williamson.

It's definitely possible that everyone who's already in the race as of today (except Williamson) will manage to qualify.  But these criteria aren't very friendly to anyone who gets in late and isn't already a big name.  If, say, Tim Ryan waits another month before entering the race, then he might not have time to get up to 65,000 donors before the deadline, and there might not be that many polls in which he hits 1% (in part because most pollsters aren't going to include him until he formally enters the race).  OTOH, O'Rourke is already being included in polls, so he already qualifies even though he hasn't announced yet.

[Mr. Morden]

Another national poll from Quinnipiac that does not include a 2020 Dem. primary matchup matchup:

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2603

It's really remarkable the extent to which the pollsters that the DNC named as the ones they'd rely on are not actually conducting any polls of the Democratic primary race.  I don't think the DNC was expecting that there'd be so few polls.  That we'd be left with just a slew of polls by Morning Consult and Emerson, which they're not counting.

I'm curious as to whether this will change, and the number of polls will pick up.  Surely, CNN and Selzer will have another poll of Iowa one of these days?

[Mr. Morden]

Politico has a new story talking up the chances of Yang and Williamson making the debate stage:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/06/2020-democrat-debates-yang-williamson-1208255

However, the story leaves me rather skeptical that Williamson will make it, as her campaign says she's only about a third of the way to reaching the 65,000 goal.

It also talks about the chaos of having many people on stage at once, but I also think they're overstating the problem, at least compared to past cycles.  We could easily end up with 16 (or fewer) candidates qualifying, which means back to back debate nights with 8 candidates on each night.  8 candidates would be the same number as were in the 2008 Dem. debates, and of course that's fewer than many of the 2008/12/16 GOP debates.

[Mr. Morden]

With the DMR poll out, an update on the # of qualifying polls everyone has got 1% or more in so far, and excluding those who say they’re not running:

Biden 4
Harris 4
O’Rourke 4
Sanders 4
Warren 4
Booker 3
Klobuchar 3
———qualification line———
Buttigieg 2
Castro 2
Gabbard 2
Gillibrand 2
Bennet 1
Bullock 1
Delaney 1
Hickenlooper 1
Inslee 1
Yang 1

Bennet and Bullock have managed to join Biden and O'Rourke in the club of those who've gotten 1% in a qualifying poll without having launched their campaigns yet.

[Mr. Morden]

We have a new Monmouth poll, but because of the DNC rule that your three qualifying polls for each candidate must be from different pollsters, and the last Monmouth poll already had a slew of candidates getting 1%, the only change it makes is increasing de Blasio from zero to one qualifying polls in which he's at 1% (again, leaving out people like Brown, who've already ruled out a run):

Biden 4
Harris 4
O’Rourke 4
Sanders 4
Warren 4
Booker 3
Klobuchar 3
———qualification line———
Buttigieg 2
Castro 2
Gabbard 2
Gillibrand 2
Bennet 1
Bullock 1
de Blasio 1
Delaney 1
Hickenlooper 1
Inslee 1
Yang 1

[Mr. Morden]

Do we know how many individual donations the other candidates have at this point? Or do we have to wait under after March 31 to find out how they did in the 1st quarter?

Even once the quarter ends, I don't think they're obligated to release their total number of unique donors in the public FEC documents.  Just the total $ raised and spent.  The number of unique donors is something that the candidates will release on their own initiative if and when they think it's advantageous to do so.

[Mr. Morden]

Note that Buttigieg's fundraising counts even though he "only has an exploratory committee".  That's because any $ raised in an exploratory committee can just be rolled over into his "real campaign" once that launches, since exploratory committees *are* regular presidential campaigns with a different name slapped on them.  So the sense in which Buttigieg, Gillibrand, Weld, etc. "haven't really started their campaigns yet" is essentially a semantic fiction.

Also note that it took Buttigieg ~2 months to hit 65,000 donors, and it sounds like Delaney still hasn't hit that number despite having been in the race for years now.  Not sure how much we can extrapolate from that to assess how the other candidates are doing, but it's another indication that if, for example, Seth Moulton really does wait until May to announce his decision on whether to run, he's not going to have enough time to qualify for the June debate.  He presumably won't be able to raise $ that fast, and at the slow rate that we're getting polls (none of which are including Moulton yet) it's highly doubtful that he'll get in on the basis of polling either.

[Mr. Morden]

What are the chances that, assuming we don't have 20 qualify through the regular rules, that they waive the rules for current members of Congress to avoid embarrassing them?

Like I don't think they would bend the rules for Williamson, but they would probably give Delaney, Swalwell, or Moulton a spot if they have space for them.

I feel like changing the rules midstream like that would look worse than letting them in.  And would complicate the DNC's options for future debates, if it's established early on that the rules can be tossed out to include more people.

And I'm not convinced that they care about such things as avoiding embarrassment for said candidates.  E.g., Roemer and McCotter weren't invited to any GOP debates in 2012, and no one cared.  And that was when the criteria for inclusion were super ad hoc.  In this case, the criteria were announced months in advance, so it's kind of Swalwell's, Moulton's, etc. fault for waiting so long to get in that they don't have time to qualify.

[Mr. Morden]

What are the chances that, assuming we don't have 20 qualify through the regular rules, that they waive the rules for current members of Congress to avoid embarrassing them?

Like I don't think they would bend the rules for Williamson, but they would probably give Delaney, Swalwell, or Moulton a spot if they have space for them.

I feel like changing the rules midstream like that would look worse than letting them in.  And would complicate the DNC's options for future debates, if it's established early on that the rules can be tossed out to include more people.

And I'm not convinced that they care about such things as avoiding embarrassment for said candidates.  E.g., Roemer and McCotter weren't invited to any GOP debates in 2012, and no one cared.  And that was when the criteria for inclusion were super ad hoc.  In this case, the criteria were announced months in advance, so it's kind of Swalwell's, Moulton's, etc. fault for waiting so long to get in that they don't have time to qualify.

But the GOP did bend the rules in 2016 for Rand Paul, and Trump used his opening statement to say "Rand Paul shouldn't be here," so there is some precedent.

They actually changed their rules to include Fiorina, because she clearly got a polling bump to the 1st tier after the 1st debate, but there just weren't enough qualifying national polls between the 1st and 2nd debates to move her up to the main debate stage if you strictly go by the rules.  So the RNC said fine, we'll just have 11 people then.  Paul was at the edge of qualification, but would have gotten in over Fiorina if you strictly go by the last 5 polls or whatever the # was, even though it was clear that he'd be in 11th place if you only used the post-1st debate polls.

So I think the precedent is that if someone who is currently polling well nonetheless doesn't get in under the rules as written because they rely too much on polls from months ago, then they bend the rules.  But if it's someone who is currently only polling at 0-2%, then I don't think they'll bend the rules to help them, and they're not really popular enough for the party to worry too much about offending their few supporters.

[Mr. Morden]

On my FB feed right now, I see a Gillibrand 2020 ad that says "Will you donate $1 to help me bring our people-first vision to the debate stage?", which I guess suggests that she doesn't have 65,000 donors yet.

[Mr. Morden]

Updated with the CNN poll….Buttigieg, Castro, and Gillibrand now have the qualifying 3 polls, regardless of what happens with fundraising:

Biden 5
Harris 5
O’Rourke 5
Sanders 5
Warren 5
Booker 4
Klobuchar 4
Buttigieg 3
Castro 3
Gillibrand 3
———qualification line———
Gabbard 2
Hickenlooper 2
Inslee 2
Bennet 1
Bullock 1
de Blasio 1
Delaney 1
Kerry 1
Yang 1

[Mr. Morden]

Again, I'm really skeptical about any of the House members not yet in the race actually being able to qualify for the first debate.  Gabbard's at ~40,000 donors after being in the race for just over two months.  I assume that with two months left, she'll be able to reach 65,000 donors in time (or get 1% in a 3rd qualifying poll).  But Eric Swalwell isn't in the race yet, so he has 0 donors.  Even if he launched his campaign tomorrow, is he really going to make it to 65,000 donors in two months?  Gabbard at least is a lightning rod, with a niche group of fans who will donate to her.  Who is going to donate to Eric Swalwell for president?  And same goes for Moulton and Ryan, who probably aren't going to declare their intentions for another month or so, giving them even less time to qualify.

I'm also curious about Delaney.  He only has 1 qualifying poll at 1% so far, and he hasn't yet announced that he has 65,000 donors.  If he's not there yet, after having been in the race for about two years or however long it's been, is he really going to make it in the next two months?  Yang made up a lot of ground quickly on the donor front, but I don't see Delaney having a viral surge like Yang did.