Only Clinton and Trump have been invited as they’re the only two candidates polling above 15 percent nationally, which is the threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Johnson’s strongest result – 13 percent support – came in a Quinnipiac poll that was not included in the average. If Donald Trump had any strategic sense and realized sooner that Johnson is an asset to him in dividing Democrats’ younger base, he would have started demanding Johnson’s inclusion in the debates months ago.
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The failure to be invited to the September 26 debate at Hofstra University deals a significant blow to Johnson and Stein, who are desperate for national exposure to promote their long-shot bids for the White House.
A split right-wing vote in Colorado and Nevada would be poisonous to Trump.
The commission added: “The candidates who have qualified to participate today previously have committed to participate in the debates sponsored by the CPD”. Among likely voters, Clinton leads in a head-to-head matchup.
Stein will be on the ballot in 44 states and the District of Columbia in the November 8 election, while Johnson has qualified for the ballot in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
While Stein, who has made appeals to disenchanted supporters of U.S. Sen. Libertarian nominees for president and vice president, Govs.
Presidential candidate and former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson will host a rally in Seattle on Saturday.
“I would say I am surprised that the CPD has chosen to exclude me from the first debate”, he said on Friday, “but I’m not”. The Johnson-Weld ticket is a third option to the current two bad choices, Johnson said. You don’t see third-party numbers like that among major demographics in a normal election year. Nader got 97,488 votes, about 1.6 percent of the total in the state. Before it formalized qualifying criteria in 2000, the commission selected participants in a more subjective way, and a third-party candidate hasn’t appeared alongside Democrats and Republicans on the stage since 1992. “Let Hillary and I sit there and just debate, because I think the system is being rigged so it’s going to be a very unfair debate”, Trump said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. The debate would have offered Johnson and Stein the largest audiences of their campaigns.
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Clinton’s campaign recognizes the problem. Clinton is planning an event September 19 in Philadelphia explicitly to emphasize “the stakes of the election for millennials”. If you believe in the third party, that’s the guy you need to voice for.
