To take part in the debates candidates must achieve ballot access in enough states to win an electoral majority and have averaged more than 15% in five selected opinion polls.
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Green Party candidate Jill Stein is now on the ballot in 45 states, including the District of Columbia, according to her campaign website.
The Commission on Presidential Debates said that only Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met the threshold for inclusion in the debate. As the commission noted Friday, Johnson averaged 8.4 percent in those polls, with Stein averaging 3.2 percent.
Johnson made the comments in response to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, who said there are reports that Weld, a former GOP governor of MA, is considering leaving the Libertarian ticket.
Ironically, the gaffe appears to have given Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld, the former Republican governor of MA, a boost in the polls.
The only time a third candidate has been allowed on the stage was 1992, when both parties wanted him on the stage for their own purposes.
Though pundits did not foresee a surprise election victory for Libertarian Johnson or the Green Party’s Stein, each candidate made recent campaign gains that seemed to put debate participation within reach. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a non-profit organization.
Last month, the commission suggested the announcement would come in mid-September, ahead of the first debate scheduled for Sept. 26 at Hofstra University. Clinton averaged 43 percent, and Donald Trump 40.4 percent. The debate would have offered Johnson and Stein the largest audiences of their campaigns.
Johnson is now polling at nine percent in the national polls, according to RealClear Politics’ national average.
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“The CPD may have excluded us from the first debate, but we can still get on the stage in October”, he said in an email to supporters and reporters. “Americans are exhausted of rigged systems, and the monopoly on debates created by the CPD is a prime and skillfully executed example”.
