ON THURSDAY Fox News will host the first debate of the 2016 election season in Cleveland, Ohio. The event will be among Republican presidential hopefuls, but not every aspirant will share the stage. With no fewer than 17 candidates now running for the job, it is simply impossible to accommodate them all at once. Perhaps to avoid comparisons with speed-dating, Fox is limiting the number of participants in its main debate to ten. The broadcaster has been fuzzy over how exactly it will determine which ten candidates will debate in primetime. The invitations will be based on who is leading in “five national polls from major organisations”—but precisely which polls, and from what dates, isn’t exactly clear.

As the horse race to the horse race to the horse race, the dash to make it to the main stage is earning a lot of attention. The subject dominated the Sunday political talk shows, and the Washington Post has been diligently tracking “who’s in” and “who’s out”. Fox News has been eagerly trumpeting the “battle” for the final spot in the debate. Some, including Nate Cohn of the New York Times, have wondered whether John Kasich’s late announcement of his candidacy was strategically timed to ensure his post-announcement bump in the polls would push him across the threshold and onto the debate stage. (It may help that the debate will be held in Mr Kasich’s home state.) And of course Donald Trump's insurgency promises to make the event a bit more entertaining than the format usually allows.

But for all the hoopla, failing to make it to the main stage in this proto-proto-horse race is actually no big deal. This is because candidates whose polls put them on the cusp of being included have no substantial hope of winning the nomination anyway.

Let’s compare two sources of data: a market-based prediction of who is likely to be the eventual nominee, and a current average of major national polls. (The market-prediction data comes from the prediction-aggregator PredictWise, and the polling data from the Huffington Post’s Pollster. Note: there’s no data yet for Jim Gilmore, who only announced his candidacy on July 29th.) These two measures are positively correlated, of course. A candidate that the market favours is probably polling well, too. But combined they help clarify the stakes of this race to the stage.