Andrew Yang qualifies for February debate stage with latest poll
Businessman Andrew Yang on Sunday qualified for the February Democratic presidential debate after earning 5% in a CNN Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire.
Yang had previously met the fundraising threshold needed to make the stage, and a Washington Post/ABC News poll released prior to the CNN poll this weekend also added to his list of qualifying polls for the February 7 debate.
Yang joins six other candidates who have qualified for the debate: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, businessman Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
In order to qualify for the debate, candidates need to receive 5% in at least four Democratic National Committee-approved national or early state (New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina) polls, or receive 7% in two early state polls. Candidates also need to receive donations from at least 225,000 unique donors, and a minimum of 1,000 unique donors per state in at least 20 different states. A candidate could also qualify for the debate by receiving at least one delegate in the Iowa caucuses, which take place four days before the debate.
The deadline for qualifying for the debate, which will take place in New Hampshire, is February 6 at 11:59 pm ET.
Though the debate takes place after the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the party’s nominating process, it will happen four days before the New Hampshire primary, the second contest this year.
Yang, who officially launched his presidential bid in 2017, was once an afterthought in the Democratic field, largely dismissed by his Democratic opponents and party operatives. But Yang has rallied a coalition of liberal Democrats, libertarians and some disaffected Republicans around a series of distinctive policy positions. Chief among those positions is his so-called Freedom Dividend, a plan to give every American adult $1,000 a month universal basic income that Yang argues would alleviate a host of social ills and eradicate poverty.
