Eight candidates have qualified for the debate so far:
— Former Vice President Joe Biden
— Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey
— Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana
— Sen. Kamala Harris of California
— Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont
— Hedge-fund investor Tom Steyer
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
— Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
Yang was the latest to qualify because he received enough support in a Quinnipiac University national poll released Tuesday afternoon. Other candidates have until 11:59 p.m. Nov. 13 to qualify.
While 12 candidates qualified for the fourth debate, scheduled for next week near Columbus, Ohio, the DNC has set higher criteria for the next one. Candidates will need at least 165,000 donors (up from 130,000) and at least 3% support in four polls (up from 2%).
As an alternative to the 3%-in-four-polls requirement, candidates can qualify by registering at least 5% support in two polls conducted in the four early-voting states.
The gradually increasing requirements have steadily culled the field of debaters and, to a lesser extent, the Democratic field as a whole. Twenty candidates qualified for each of the first two debates, when they needed only 65,000 donors or 1% in three polls. But only 10 met the higher requirements for the third debate; two more met them in time for next week’s.
Sanders, who is recovering from a heart attack, is still expected to participate in next week’s debate. On Tuesday morning, before seeing a new cardiologist, he told reporters that he had felt unusually fatigued for the past month or two and that he “should have listened to those symptoms.”
This article originally appeared in
.