“In the light of new polling released this morning and in the spirit of being as inclusive as possible, CNN has decided to include Sen. Rand Paul in the prime-time debate,” a CNN spokeswoman said.
Podium order was determined by the average of the national polls from November and December.
CNN’s debate, which will be held in Las Vegas and is the fifth of the primary season, is the first to use early-state polls as a way to make the main event in prime-time. Candidates must meet one of three criteria in polls conducted between October 29 and December 13 and recognized by CNN: an average of at least 3.5% nationally; at least 4% in Iowa; or at least 4% in New Hampshire.
Along with Christie, Fiorina and Kasich qualified for the primetime debate because of their New Hampshire average.
The announcement of who was supposed to be in the debate was initially supposed to be made this morning during the 9am Eastern broadcast of CNN’s State Of The Union with Jake Tapper, but that show ended without Tapper making any announcement at all, and many observers were left wondering what had happened. As noted in the excerpted article, the motivation for including Paul in the debate appears to have come from the release of a Fox News Channel poll out of Iowa that was released at nearly the same time that Tapper was going on the air live this morning, and it showed Paul coming in at five percent in the Hawkeye State, which is better than Paul has done in most recent Iowa polling, including the Des Moines Register poll released last night in which in came in at three percent. Based on that poll, Paul’s average in Iowa, which had been below 3.5% after the release of the DMR poll, increased to 3.7%. Paul’s campaign spokesman argued on Twitter that the new Fox poll actually put his average at precisely four percent, this meeting the criteria that CNN had set. As Philip Bump notes this afternoon, though, that calculation only works if you leave out another poll that was among those CNN said it would consider and released within the relevant time from. With that poll included, Paul’s average does indeed drop to 3.7% and, since CNN’s initial criteria said that it would not round averages up or down Paul should not have been included.
Given the fact that Paul’s campaign had already started complaining about the possibility that he might be excluded from the main debate stage, it’s probable that the powers that be at CNN decided to use the Fox News Channel Poll to justify putting Paul in the debate. As it was, it seemed apparent that Paul’s campaign would have made a significant about his being relegated to the undercard debate had that occurred, while at the same time the media was writing stories about Paul’s campaign allegedly coming to an end if that happened. As Bump’s colleague David Weigel notes, that speculation hit a fever pitch last night after a Boston Globe story insinuated that Paul would be dropping out if he didn’t make the main stage debate, a report that was later edited after the Paul campaign objected. In any case, CNN likely concluded that rounding Paul’s numbers up and including him was easier than the headache it would have to endure over the next 48 hours if Paul had been denied a place on the main stage. As it stands, of course, Paul’s campaign is just as troubled as it was before this afternoon’s announcement, He’s largely a non-factor in the polls nationally and in New Hampshire, and his five percent performance in the Fox News Iowa poll actually seems as though it’s an outlier given where he’s ranked in recent polling in the state. Additionally, over the course of the previous four Republican debates Paul has failed to make much of an impression, and while he’ll have a nother chance on Tuesday, followed by two more in January, it’s not looking very good for the Senator from Kentucky. CNN cut you a very big break, Senator, what you do with it is up to you.
