The first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election season will be held August 6 on Fox News. With a record 17 serious GOP candidates, the organizers of the first two debates (Fox News and CNN) have announced that participation in their respective prime-time debates will be limited to the 10 candidates ranked highest in the national polls. Remaining candidates who cross a modest threshold will participate in an alternative forum in a non-prime time slot (jokingly referred to as the “little kids table”).
In the case of the Fox News debate, the 10 candidates with the highest average vote intention calculated using the five most recent major national polls as of the evening of August 4 will earn a spot in the prime time debate. Fox News has left open the possibility of more than 10 candidates participating in the debate in the event of a tie, but has been opaque about what would actually constitute a tie. Any other candidates who have an average vote intention in these polls of 1 percent or more will take part in a second-tier forum during the early afternoon of August 6.
Rick Perry left office in January having served a record 14 years as governor of the second-most populous state in the nation, but now finds himself in the unenviable position of potentially being left off the main stage on August 6. While this exclusion would not be the death knell of Perry’s presidential bid, it would represent a significant setback and make it all the more difficult for his campaign and his Super PACs to raise money, for him to win the endorsement of key actors in the early caucus and primary states and for him to reach out to Republican voters nationwide.
Recent national polls suggest there are eight GOP candidates who enjoy a virtual lock on one of the 10 podiums at the Fox News debate in Cleveland: businessman/showman Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. There also are three candidates who would appear to have no realistic possibility of being among the top 10 in the polls on August 4: former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, former New York Gov. George Pataki and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
That leaves six candidates competing for the ninth and 10th podiums in Cleveland: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Rick Perry, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. All six are at present above the 1 percent threshold required to take part in the consolation prize afternoon forum, although Fiorina, Jindal and Santorum are dangerously close to falling below this minimum barrier. Current polls indicate that Perry is presently very much on the bubble, with a mere 1 percent rise or fall in the polls over the next week likely to be the deciding factor of whether at 9 p.m. EDT on Aug. 6 Perry is on the debate stage at Quicken Loans Arena or back at his hotel watching the debate on television.
Mark P. Jones is the Baker Institute’s fellow in political science as well as the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies and the director of the Master of Global Affairs Program at Rice University.
This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
