With 20 candidates confirmed for the first round of Democratic presidential primary debates toward the end of June, presidential hopefuls who did not qualify face an uphill battle to make a dent in the race — but they still have a shot.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts failed to meet the Democratic National Committee’s threshold for inclusion in the first round of debates on June 26 and June 27: at least 1% support in three qualifying polls or 65,000 individual donors including 200 donors from 20 states. Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel and Miramar, Fla., Mayor Wayne Messam also missed the qualifying thresholds.
“Debates are important but they’re not the be-all and end-all,” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson told the Washington Examiner. “Any of these candidates can find the moment where they catch on in a Cedar Rapids union hall or a Nashua dinner if they find an authentic narrative that resonates with voters and shows why they’re the antidote to Trump.”
Missing the first debate does not bode for a strong start for the presidential hopefuls, especially when long-shot candidates like businessman Andrew Yang and self-help guru Marianne Williamson were each able to meet both the polling and donor thresholds for the debate stage.
Bullock and Moulton “have to figure out what hasn’t worked, and honestly, not much is working if they didn’t qualify for the debate,” Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright told the Washington Examiner. “They have to figure out if there is a need for them in this race if the voters are not responding.”
But missing the first debate is not necessarily the nail in the coffin for those on the outs. “There are some other campaigns who barely qualified or barely made the deadline,” Seawright added. “I would be surprised or shocked to see if they made the second or the third debate.”
Not all the candidates left out of the debates are created equal, however. Teenagers run 89-year-old Gravel’s campaign, and he is thought to be little more than a flame-throwing protest candidate. “They didn’t have a real, legitimate campaign running anyway,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said of Gravel and Meesam.
Though Bullock failed to qualify for the first round, Bannon said that he sees him as a more legitimate presidential contender than Yang or Williamson, who Bannon said are “essentially running PR campaigns as opposed to a presidential race.”
Bullock was one poll short of qualifying for the debate, and because he waited until the end of the Montana legislative session to announce his candidacy, he had less time to fundraise than other hopefuls. Many analysts thought that an open-ended poll that put Bullock at 1% would count in his favor before the DNC announced last week that it would not, causing the Bullock campaign to accuse the DNC of changing its rules.
The Bullock campaign has already used his exclusion from the debates as a fundraising hook. “The DNC is excluding Democrat Steve Bullock from the first debate,” a fundraising email sent Wednesday read. Bannon expects it will continue to do so.
The DNC’s polling and donor thresholds will remain in place for the second primary debates in July, giving Bullock and Moulton a glimmer of hope to meet the requirements before that debate.
But because the debate has only 20 spots, and 20 candidates have met the requirements, additional qualifiers will be subject to tie-breaking procedures where preference is given to candidates who met both the polling and donor thresholds, followed by candidates with the highest polling averages.
Six candidates qualified for the first debates through polling alone, meaning that to have a good shot at getting in the second round of debates, those left out of the first round will have to either meet both the polling and donor threshold or surge in the polls to pull his average above that of some of primary rivals.
Bullock and Moulton could also be getting some encouragement from looking at the trajectories of past Democratic hopefuls. Former President Jimmy Carter, for instance, polled at an average of 0.8% in the first half of 1975, according to FiveThirtyEight, before going on to win the Democratic nomination in 1976.
Qualifying for the third round of debates will be more difficult. Candidates must secure at least 2% support in four qualifying polls between June 28 and August 28 in addition to 130,000 donors, with 400 donors from 20 states, for the debates scheduled in September.
