He’ll join six other candidates who have already qualified for the Dec. 19 debate in Los Angeles, which is co-hosted by PBS NewsHour and POLITICO: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren.

To qualify, candidates need to hit 4 percent in four polls approved by the DNC (or 6 percent in two early-state polls) and have contributions from 200,000 unique donors.

No candidate’s qualification is official until confirmed by the DNC; candidates' qualification is based off of POLITICO’s tracking of public polling and donor counts.

"We are going to do something unprecedented on the debate stage next week, and that is show up as the lone person of color," Yang joked to reporters in Iowa. "I'm excited to make the debate stage, not surprised. We've been showing consistent growth throughout."

"I will be honest, I thought we would going to make it based upon a poll in one of the early states," he continued. "But thrilled to make it on the basis of a national poll — that in some ways is even better."

Both polls show Biden, the former vice president, leading the field.

In the Monmouth poll, Biden has a narrow lead over the two leading liberal challengers, Sanders and Warren. He is at 26 percent to Sanders' 21 percent and Warren's 17 percent. Pete Buttigieg is a distant fourth at 8 percent, followed by Mike Bloomberg's 5 percent. Sen. Amy Klobuchar was at 4 percent, her best performance in a Monmouth national poll this year, which made her the final candidate to clear that benchmark.

The Quinnipiac poll shows Biden with a greater advantage. He is at 29 percent, to Sanders’ 17 percent and Warren’s 15 percent. Buttigieg is at 9 percent, and Bloomberg is at 5 percent. Yang is the last candidate at the 4 percent mark.

Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg were roughly stable in the Monmouth poll, compared to the results of a November poll from the university. Warren saw a modest drop, and this is the first time Bloomberg was included in a Monmouth poll since the beginning of 2019, before he initially ruled out a presidential run.

In the Quinnipiac poll, Biden and Sanders both saw a small modest bump. Warren was stable, while Buttigieg's vote share dropped 7 points.

Tulsi Gabbard, the only other candidate who is close to qualifying for the debate, had less than 1 percent support in the Monmouth poll and 2 percent in the Quinnipiac poll. Gabbard is one poll away from qualifying. However, she seemingly removed herself from contention Monday evening.

"For a number of reasons, I have decided not to attend the December 19th 'debate' — regardless of whether or not there are qualifying polls," she tweeted on Monday. "I instead choose to spend that precious time directly meeting with and hearing from the people of New Hampshire and South Carolina."

However, the Hawaii congresswoman could always change her mind. She publicly toyed with boycotting the October debate, before ultimately opting to participate.

Bloomberg will not be in the Dec. 19 debate, either. He is not collecting campaign contributions, which precludes him from the debate stage — and it isn't clear if he would hit the polling threshold either.

No other debate qualifying polls have been publicly announced ahead of the Thursday deadline, but polls' releases are not typically announced well in advance.

All of the polls approved by the DNC are conducted either by independent media outlets or universities, who decide on their own when to conduct and release polls. Some pollsters have publicly bemoaned the position the DNC has put them in, arguing that debate qualifications was not the reason they were conducting surveys.

Yang found out he qualified for the debate during a meeting with the Des Moines Register's editorial board, when his campaign manager held up a sign that said "4%! We're in!"

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted from Dec 4-8. It surveyed 384 registered voters who identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The Quinnipiac University Poll was conducted from Dec. 4-9, surveying 665 registered Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Eugene Daniels in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.