The Democratic National Committee on Thursday announced the 20 candidates who qualified for the first presidential primary debate at the end of June.
The candidates are, in alphabetical order: Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan, Bernie Sanders, Eric Swalwell, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.
This leaves four candidates off the stage — Steve Bullock, Mike Gravel, Wayne Messam and Seth Moulton — none of whom crossed a qualifying threshold.
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A random drawing to divide the 20 candidates into two fields of 10 will be held Friday. Top-tier candidates — candidates polling at or above 2 percent — will be randomly and evenly divided between the two debates on June 26 and June 27 in Miami. Candidates polling below that mark will also be randomly and evenly divided among the two nights.
The debates will be hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo, and each will be two hours long. Earlier this week, the network announced that there will be five moderators for the debates: “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt; "Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie; “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd; MSNBC prime-time host Rachel Maddow; and “Noticias Telemundo” and “NBC Nightly News Saturday” anchor José Díaz-Balart.
Bullock’s exclusion means the DNC rebuffed his campaign’s assertion that he had, in fact, qualified for the debates. Bullock’s campaign contended he hit the polling threshold — crossing 1 percent in three approved polls.
However, the DNC told POLITICO last week that it would not count open-ended polls for qualification — which ultimately left Bullock one poll short from qualifying.
A second round of debates will be hosted by CNN in Detroit at the end of July, using identical qualification rules for the upcoming June debates. That means the aforementioned 20 candidates have already passed the qualification threshold for the July debates.
However, the stage lineup is not locked in for the July debates. Additional candidates — like Bullock, Gravel, Messam or Moulton — could qualify for the July showdown over the next month.
The DNC has said it will limit the total number of participants in the debates to 20 candidates. If more than 20 ultimately qualify for the second round, a series of tiebreakers could be triggered to determine which candidates who have passed a qualification threshold would be left off.
Later debates in the fall have a higher threshold to qualify than the summer debates.