A national poll qualifying for the Jan. 14 presidential debate hasn’t been released in two weeks, and an early state qualifying poll hasn’t come out since November. With just a week left before the final polling and donor deadline, only five 2020 candidates have secured a spot on the debate stage. The Democratic National Committee refuses to do anything about it, at the peril of its own voters.
Right now the stage includes Joe Biden, who commands the field with nearly 30% of the vote nationally; Bernie Sanders, who follows at nearly 20% primary support; Elizabeth Warren, who has waned to around 15%; Pete Buttigieg, who has plateaued around the 10% mark; and Amy Klobuchar, who polls around 3% or 4% nationally but double that in Iowa.
What the stage doesn’t include is Andrew Yang, who often outpolls Klobuchar; Tom Steyer, who outpolls both of them in early states; or Michael Bloomberg, who outpolls Klobuchar, Steyer, and Yang nationally.
The 2019 debates were an audition for a role on the primary ballot. This year’s debates are meant to showcase the actual options for voters to choose in a matter of months or even weeks. Any debate stage that doesn’t include candidates whom the country actually have to choose from when pen meets paper at their primaries doesn’t do justice to the electorate.
The case keeping Bloomberg off the stage is fair enough. The DNC has employed a unique donor requirement from the start, and the former New York mayor hasn’t even tried to entertain it.
But Yang and Steyer are polling better than a qualified candidate in some crucial early states, and in the case of the former, nationally. But the DNC’s 15 approved pollsters, which don’t include some of the most accurate in the business, haven’t reflected that. It’s not the DNC’s fault its approved pollsters haven’t done more early state polls, but it is kind of Nancy Pelosi’s fault for making pollsters more interested in impeachment than the Iowa caucus.
Candidates had 26 polling possibilities to qualify for the December debate, 32 for November, and nearly 40 for October. It makes sense that January would allow slightly fewer, but right now, this month’s debate has had just 17 polls qualify. At this point, Yang and Steyer’s exclusion from the debate is random, not reasonable.
The DNC is allowed to operate as it wishes, but keeping legitimate candidates on primary ballots off the debate stage does a disservice to those very voters it claims to serve.
