Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that he should be on the main stage at the next GOP presidential debate Thursday and that he’s going to wait to make a decision on whether he would sit out the “undercard” debate again if he doesn’t qualify.

“We think we actually do qualify, and we’re going to keep maintaining that we do,” Mr. Paul said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “The most recent poll out of Iowa had us at 6 percent, which is ahead of three people who were in the debate the last time, including Jeb Bush, and so we are going to continue to argue they need to count the polls correctly and they need to understand what the margin of error is.”

Mr. Paul failed to qualify for the main stage at the recent GOP debate in South Carolina, and opted not to participate in the earlier, “undercard” debate. Candidates have to poll in the top six nationally or the top five in Iowa or New Hampshire in order to get on the main stage at Thursday’s debate in Des Moines, hosted by Fox News.

“If someone is at 5.8 and the other person is at 6, it’s identical,” Mr. Paul said. “Really the difference between 5 and 8 is identical if the margin of error is 3. So we maintain that we do qualify, we have a $25 million campaign, we have made 500,000 phone calls in Iowa and we have 1,000 precinct chairmen. We think it would be disenfranchising our voters to say oh my goodness, he can’t be in the debate. So we will argue strenuously for inclusion.”

He said he would wait to make a decision on whether he would sit out again if he doesn’t qualify.

“If they exclude me from the debate, I’m the only one talking about military spending, I’m the only one really saying that our military interventions in the Middle East have backfired,” he said. “If they want to exclude that voice, what does that say to the millions of voters who agree with me?

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