Fox News says it has not decided which polls will be used to determine which 10 Republican presidential candidates will qualify for a primetime debate on Thursday, contrary to an earlier report.
“As we’ve said all along, we will base the top 10 on the five most recent polls, leading up to 5 p.m. on Tuesday,” the network’s executive vice president, Michael Clemente, said in a statement to Politico. “Since we don’t know who is releasing polls, nor when that polling was done, nor the methodology, it would be impossible for anyone to know what polls will be used. Once again, all of the ‘reporting’ in this story is based off of anonymous sources with zero knowledge of what’s actually going on.”
Citing an anonymous source with direct knowledge of Fox’s plans, New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported Monday that candidates would be chosen from the most recent polls conducted by Monmouth University, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University, Bloomberg, CBS/New York Times, and Fox News.
The Fox News national poll, released Monday night, found that real estate mogul Donald Trump led the field with 26 percent of Republican primary voters. He was followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 15 percent, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 9 percent, Dr. Ben Carson at 7 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6 percent each, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 5 percent each, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 3 percent each.
Lower-tier candidates including former Hewlitt Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore all polled at 2 percent or less in the survey.
The Fox News poll surveyed 475 registered Republican primary voters by phone from July 30-Aug. 2. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
