Fox News has reportedly begun crunching the poll numbers that will decide who qualifies for its top-ten Republican primary debate Thursday night.
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that the cable channel’s election experts have already decided on which polls would determine the field:
According to a source with direct knowledge of the plans, Fox’s team of election analysts is currently crunching numbers to set the field. “It’s going to be the most recent polls by non-public entities,” the network source explained. “They need to be done with live interviewers, as opposed to internet responses like what Rasmussen does.” According to the source, candidates will be chosen from the following polls: Monmouth University (released today), NBC News/Wall Street Journal (August 2), Quinnpiac University (July 30), Bloomberg, CBS/New York Times, and Fox News (all releasing tomorrow). If a poll from ABC News or another organization fitting Fox’s criteria is released overnight, then it will be swapped in.
According to the polls in that list that have already been released, it’s looking like the primetime debaters will be real estate mogul Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Dr. Ben Carson, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Fox News later rebutted Sherman’s report in a statement to Politico.
“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, told 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.”
This post has been updated.
