Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii became the 12th Democratic presidential candidate to qualify for the October debate after a poll released on Tuesday showed her with 2 percent support in New Hampshire.
In order to earn a spot on the stage in Ohio next month, candidates must procure donations from 130,000 people and earn at least 2 percent support in four qualifying polls. Ms. Gabbard passed the donor threshold in early August but is only now getting her fourth qualifying poll, a week before the Oct. 1 deadline set by the Democratic National Committee.
Thanks to her standing in the poll released Tuesday, a Monmouth University survey of New Hampshire voters likely to participate in the Democratic presidential primary, Ms. Gabbard will be invited to join the 10 candidates who participated in the September debate, along with Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former hedge fund investor, who has also qualified. The debate will be held at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, on Oct. 15 and possibly Oct. 16, and will be hosted by CNN and The New York Times.
It is not yet clear whether the debate will take place over two nights, but Ms. Gabbard’s inclusion adds to that possibility. The June and July debates featured 20 candidates evenly split over two-night events; after the D.N.C. tightened its qualification requirements for the fall, the debate this month was held with 10 candidates on a single evening.
Even as Ms. Gabbard qualified for the October debate on Tuesday, other campaigns were already looking ahead to the following debate, scheduled for November.
The Monmouth poll enabled five candidates to punch their tickets for the November debate, according to an analysis by The Times: former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Senator Kamala Harris of California and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.
To be included in the November debate, candidates must receive donations from at least 165,000 people and must meet one of two polling requirements: They must receive either 3 percent support in four qualifying national or early-state polls, or 5 percent support in two polls in the four early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The five candidates who qualified for the November debate have all passed the donor threshold and met the polling standard with the release of Tuesday’s New Hampshire poll.
The date and location of the November debate have not been announced.
Ms. Gabbard, 38, who was a soldier in Iraq and currently serves as a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, has made getting out of foreign wars her central campaign promise and is likely to reiterate her message in front of the national television audience that the October debates will provide.
For weeks, Ms. Gabbard was just a few polls short of making the fall debates, and as it became clear she would not be allowed to participate in the September event, her campaign began to publicly question the D.N.C.’s qualification criteria. Like some of her rivals for the nomination, Ms. Gabbard has earned 2 percent support or higher in several polls that the D.N.C. does not count toward debate qualification, and her campaign has argued vociferously that some of them should.
The Monmouth poll released Tuesday showed Ms. Warren and Mr. Biden atop the Democratic field in New Hampshire: Ms. Warren had 27 support, and Mr. Biden had 25 percent. Mr. Sanders finished third with 12 percent, followed by Mr. Buttigieg with 10 percent. Ms. Harris finished fifth with 3 percent support.
The poll of 401 registered New Hampshire Democrats and unaffiliated voters who are likely to participate in the 2020 Democratic primary had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. The poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 17-21, a few days after the last Democratic debate.
A Monmouth poll of New Hampshire voters conducted in May had Mr. Biden far ahead with 36 percent support. In that poll, Mr. Sanders finished second with 18 percent and Ms. Warren finished fourth, behind Mr. Buttigieg, with 8 percent support.
A CBS/YouGov poll of registered Democrats in New Hampshire released earlier this month showed Ms. Warren, Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders locked in a statistical dead heat, each with the support of about one in four respondents.
Besides Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Steyer and the five top-polling candidates, the other contenders set to debate in October are Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, the former housing secretary Julián Castro, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas and the entrepreneur Andrew Yang.