The McClatchy-Marist Poll has temporarily suspended its survey of primary voters because of “concern that public polls are being misused to decide who will be in and who will be excluded” from the first nationally televised debate of GOP presidential candidates, according to a report on McClatchy’s website.
Fox News will host the first debate of Republican candidates on Thursday. The top ten Republican candidates, as determined by recent handpicked nationwide polls at Fox News’ discretion, will appear in a prime-time debate. The rest of the major candidates included in the polls selected by the cable television station will have the opportunity to appear in a separate debate at 5 p.m.
The Marist Institute for Public Opinion told McClatchy the debate criterion required too much precision in polling of candidates that are just fractions of a percentage apart.
“It’s a problem when it’s shaping who gets to sit at the table,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute, to McClatchy. “It’s a bad use of public polls. It asks public polls to have a precision that ignores the margin of error. There’s a big distinction made where there’s no statistical difference.”
Despite such news, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus continues to tout national polls as the best information that can be used to stock the debate stage and insists the GOP cannot force Fox News to change its debate criterion.
“You can’t necessarily treat someone that’s polling at 18 or 20 percent the same as someone that’s polling at half of a percent or one percent,” Priebus said on ABC. “There are some things that we don’t control. Now that being said, CNN and Fox have agreed that every candidate, all 17, are going to participate in debate night.”
“Common sense would tell you that there is no formal schedule for who releases polls and when,” said Michael Clemente, an executive vice president of Fox News, in a statement. “And fairness would tell you that we can’t judge any poll until you can see the methodology. When the results are released, everyone will see that common sense and fairness prevailed.”
For the several major candidates who dislike the RNC and Fox News’ decision, they will have an opportunity on Monday to share the stage with more than a dozen of their fellow major candidates in front of a nationwide audience on C-SPAN. The Voters First Forum, co-sponsored by the New Hampshire Union Leader, will air on Monday night.
