Scrambling to win an invite to the third Democratic presidential debate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is calling on the Democratic National Committee to expand the list of “certified” polls it uses to determine who gets a ticket to the big show.
The Gabbard campaign said Monday the DNC should release the criteria for the 16 polling organizations they deem “certified” and said the Hawaii Democrat would qualify for the Houston debate if other surveys been taken into account.
“Rep. Gabbard has exceeded 2% support in 26 national and early state polls, but only two of them are on the DNC’s ’certified” list,’ her campaign said. “Many of the uncertified polls, including those conducted by highly reputable organizations such as The Economist and the Boston Globe, are ranked by Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight as more accurate than some DNC ’certified’ polls.”
The DNC raised the bar for qualifying for the September debate, requiring candidates to attract at least 2 % support in four qualifying polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28 and to have 130,000 unique donors, including at least 400 individual donors in at least 20 states.
Ms. Gabbard is among a number of candidates who are not on track to qualify and have resorted to griping about the DNC rules.
“The Democratic National Committee has the responsibility to facilitate more conversations between the future leaders of this country, not less,” the Gabbard campaign said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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