CNN alters debate criteria for choosing top 10 GOP contenders
CNN announced Tuesday that it would shift the polling window it is using to determine which of the 17 Republican candidates will participate in the primetime debate it is hosting on Sept. 16.
The GOP candidates ranked in the top ten in polling between Aug. 6 and Sept. 10 will be included in the primetime debate. Other candidates may join the top 10 candidates, in the event that there are ties.
This move gives Carly Fiorina a better shot at moving from the second tier to the top tier of candidates, since she has begun to poll better following what was considered by many to be a strong performance in the first presidential debate. CNN's original window was set from Jul. 16 through Sept. 10, and Fiorina polled poorly prior to the Aug. 6 Fox News debate.
The cable network said that it amended its criteria when it realized that too few polls were being released to arrive at what CNN said was "a fair editorial judgment." It noted that as of Tuesday, only three polls that CNN would use in its average have been released. By comparison, in 2007, from August through mid-September, 16 polls had been released and in 2011 in a similar time frame, 15 polls were released.
"In May, we announced criteria for our September 16th Republican debates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library," CNN said in a statement. "We said that we would use the average of approved national polls from July 16th through September 10th to determine the makeup of the debates. At the time, we expected there to be many more national polls following the first Republican debate, in August, than there appears there will be."
CNN continued, "We learned this week that there will likely be only two more polls by the deadline of September 10th. In a world where we expected there to be at least 15 national polls, based on historic precedent, it appears there will be only five. As a result, we now believe we should adjust the criteria to ensure the next debate best reflects the most current state of the national race."