Who will make the next debate?
If you thought you would get a break from debate chatter after this week, we’re sorry to be the bearers of bad news: It’s time to talk about September.
The third set of Democratic debates, scheduled for Sept. 12 and 13, is poised to cut the field in half. Twenty candidates participated in this week’s debates. Just eight have met the much more stringent criteria for the next ones, and only two to four others are within striking distance at all.
The candidates have until Aug. 28 to get 130,000 donors and at least 2 percent support in four polls. Here is who has qualified so far:
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Mr. Biden
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Mr. Booker
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Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.
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Ms. Harris
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Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
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Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas
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Mr. Sanders
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Ms. Warren
The former housing secretary Julián Castro and the entrepreneur Andrew Yang will probably be there, too: They have met the donor threshold and gotten three qualifying polls apiece. An 11th candidate, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, just met the donor threshold, but she has only one qualifying poll.
After that, the odds get much longer. Only two other candidates — former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and the impeachment activist Tom Steyer — have even one qualifying poll, and Mr. Hickenlooper’s fund-raising numbers are so low that his chances of reaching 130,000 donors are tiny.
Sanders is crushing everyone else in donors
Mr. Sanders has far more individual donors than any other candidate, according to a New York Times analysis this week: an estimated 746,000 this election cycle, compared with 421,000 for Ms. Warren, who is in second place. The only places he isn’t dominating are the home states of opponents: Delaware (where Mr. Biden had the most donors), Indiana (Mr. Buttigieg), Massachusetts (Ms. Warren), Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), Montana (Gov. Steve Bullock) and Texas (Mr. O’Rourke).
You can read the full analysis here.
The numbers show just how well Mr. Sanders is doing with small donors. His lead in total money raised is smaller: He has collected about $36 million, and Mr. Buttigieg is in second place with $32 million. Ms. Warren is in third place by that measure.