10th candidate

Castro becomes 10th candidate to qualify for fall debates

By ZACH MONTELLARO and QUINT FORGEY

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro has qualified for the fall Democratic primary debates, the tenth candidate to do so.

Castro received 2 percent in a CNN/SRSS national poll released Tuesday. To qualify for the debate, candidates need to get at least 2 percent in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and donations from 130,000 unique donors. Castro had already gotten 2 percent in three previous polls, and his campaign said he has already hit the donor mark.

Castro is the tenth candidates to qualify for the two fall debates, joining Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang on stage.

In the CNN poll, Biden leads the Democratic field with 29 percent, followed by Sanders' 15 percent and Warren's 14 percent.

Buttigieg and Harris are tied for fourth place at 5 percent each, and O'Rourke has 3 percent, the last candidate above that mark.

Additional candidates only have another 8 days to qualify for the September debate. The debate will be on Sept. 12. The DNC said that it will limit the stage to no more than 10 candidates, so if an additional candidate qualifies, a second night of debates will be held on Sept. 13.

Billionaire Tom Steyer is the next most likely candidate to qualify for the fall debates, needing just one additional poll after clearing the donor mark last week. Steyer was at 1 percent in the new CNN poll.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) also picked up a qualifying poll on Tuesday, scoring 2 percent in CNN's national survey. This is her second qualifying poll, and she has already hit the donor mark.

Biden is up 7 points compared to another national poll by the network in late June, which showed him in first place with 22 percent support.

Tuesday’s poll results also show Harris backsliding. She suffered a 12-point decrease in support compared to the June CNN survey, conducted in the days immediately following the first primary debate, where she laced into Biden.

Both of the fall debates are expected to have fewer participants than the summer debates, where 20 candidates took the stage across two nights. But the October debate could end up larger than the September debate. Candidates who qualify for September are automatically in the October debate, and those who missed out on September have more time to qualify for October.

The October debate qualification period will close two weeks before that debate is held. Details for the October debate, including its date or host, have not yet been announced.

The CNN poll was conducted via telephone from August 15-18, surveying 1,001 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. For the subsample of 402 Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, the margin of error is 6.1 percentage points.