2020 Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota will officially join eight other candidates in Georgia for the fifth Democratic presidential primary debate.
Klobuchar qualified for the November stage after garnering 3 percent support a new national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University released Thursday making it her fourth poll to hit 3 percent meeting the Democratic National Committee’s threshold to participate. Klobuchar had already met the donor requirement of having at least 165,000 unique donors.
The debate, scheduled for Nov. 20 in Atlanta, Georgia will be hosted and moderated by MSNBC and The Washington Post. Moderators for the primetime event were announced Wednesday and will include Ashley Parker of the Washington Post along with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell and Kristen Welker.
Klobuchar will go head-to-head with eight other candidates who have already qualified, including former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, billionaire Tom Steyer, tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
The Quinnipiac poll, conducted Oct. 17-21 after the fourth primary debate held in Ohio last week, shows Warren leading the pack with 28 percent support with Biden coming behind at 21 percent. Sanders scored 15 percent and Buttigieg landed 10 percent. The rest of the field remained in the single-digits.
The poll’s results conflict with a new CNN poll released Wednesday showing Biden way ahead of the rest of the field with 34 percent compared to Warren at 19 percent and Sanders garnering 16 percent.
Real Clear Politics’ latest aggregate of polls show a more narrow lead for Biden with little more than 27 percent with Warren at just below 22 percent.
Candidates seeking entry to the fifth Democratic debate have until Nov. 13 to meet the DNC’s requirements of hitting at least 3 percent support in four pre-approved national polls in addition to showing at least 165,000 individual donors with 600 coming from 20 different states.
Three candidates who qualified for last week’s debate have yet to meet the DNC thresholds for November, including U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro.
The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 713 voters who were either Democrats or independents who leaned Democratic with a +/-4.6 percent margin of error.
