Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former hedge fund investor turned impeachment activist, became the 11th Democratic presidential candidate to qualify for the October debates on Sunday after a new poll showed him with 2 percent support in Nevada.
To make the cut, candidates must procure donations from 130,000 people and earn 2 percent support in four qualifying polls. Mr. Steyer fell one poll short of qualifying for the third Democratic debate in Houston this week, but the Democratic National Committee’s rules allow polls to carry over and count toward qualification for the fourth set of debates in Ohio, on Oct. 15 and 16.
Only 10 candidates earned enough support to appear in this week’s debate, and they will all appear on a single stage on Thursday night. But with 11 candidates now qualified for the October event, the D.N.C. will most likely split that debate across two nights, as it did for the first two sets of debates in June and July.
[Who’s in? Who’s out? Keep up with the 2020 field with our candidate tracker.]
The new poll that propelled Mr. Steyer into the October debate was one of several surveys of key early voting states released by CBS and YouGov on Sunday morning. The poll of 624 registered Democrats in Nevada had Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont narrowly in the lead there with 29 percent support. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was next with 27 percent, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had 18 percent.
In qualifying for the fourth set of debates, Mr. Steyer joins 10 other candidates who have also done so: Mr. Biden; Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.; Julián Castro, the former housing secretary; Senator Kamala Harris of California; Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas; Mr. Sanders; Ms. Warren; and the entrepreneur Andrew Yang.