General Discussion

brooklynite

(94,748 posts) Fri Jul 31, 2015, 01:22 PM Jul 2015

Four Republicans Are On The Bubble To Get Into The First Debate

At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, a gong will be struck at the Fox News headquarters in New York. At that moment, the five most recent national primary polls, “as recognized by FOX News,”1 will be averaged, and the top 10 Republican presidential candidates2 will get invites to the network’s prime-time debate Thursday, the first of the season. (Full disclosure: I don’t have any actual evidence that a gong will be used.)

So which candidates are likely to make the prime-time debate and which are destined for the “JV” event (if our assumptions about which pollsters Fox News will use for its average are correct)? To get a sense for just how random the results can be depending on where you draw the line, we looked at the current five-poll average — as if the debate were being held Aug. 1 — as well as the previous four times the average was updated as new polls came out. A new poll has been released every few days3 over the past few weeks. These averages reveal that some candidates are basically shoo-ins; others are very unlikely to make the cut. Then there are the “on the bubble” candidates, in one day and out the next. For them, who gets in to the prime-time debate will likely be as much about luck as about where they truly stand with Republican voters.

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