DNC Chairman Tom Perez. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images 2020 elections DNC raises threshold to make November debate stage

The Democratic National Committee has slightly raised the bar to qualify for the November primary debate in a move unlikely to significantly reduce the number of participating candidates.

Candidates will need to clear 3 percent in four DNC-approved polls, up from the 2 percent required to qualify for the September and October debates. But the committee also created an additional early-state path to qualify: garnering 5 percent in two approved polls conducted in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.


Additionally, candidates now need to receive donations from 165,000 unique donors — up from 130,000 from the September and October debates — with 600 unique donors in 20 different states, territories or the District of Columbia.

The new thresholds represent the DNC's latest attempt to balance its mandate to cull the field while also facing complaints about excluding candidates with impressive resumes, including sitting senators and governors, who could not meet the previous, lower polling and donor marks.

Even some of the major candidates who have appeared in each of the first three debates have been forced to adjust their strategies to boost their poll numbers or trawl for small-dollar donors on Facebook, often spending multiples more to advertise than the money they received in return.

The DNC has largely left the existing tests for the candidates in place, with only slightly higher bars for them to clear. For the main, 3-percent threshold, candidates still cannot count polls released by the same sponsor in the same geographical area twice. But under the higher, 5-percent path in the early states, candidates can repeat polls from the same sponsor in the same geographical area, a nod to the infrequency of early-state polls.

Polls must be released between Sept. 13 and seven days before the November debate — the timing or location of which has not yet been announced — to count toward qualification. The list of approved poll sponsors was tweaked slightly to specify news organizations that have polling partnerships. For example, NBC News' partnerships with The Wall Street Journal and Marist College are included, but now excluded would be any NBC News/SurveyMonkey polls that counted toward the third and fourth debates.

Additionally, candidates now need to receive donations from 165,000 unique donors — up from 130,000 from the September and October debates — with 600 unique donors in 20 different states, territories or the District of Columbia. The deadline for the fundraising threshold is the same: seven days prior to the November debate.

The new thresholds will not present much of a challenge to the upper echelon of candidates. Candidates like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could all meet the polling threshold as soon as Tuesday. Each received at least 5 percent in a Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa poll released on Saturday, and Monmouth University is releasing a poll conducted in New Hampshire on Tuesday morning.

The other six candidates who have qualified for the October debate are less certain to qualify for the November one. Some — like Sens. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and businessman Andrew Yang — have already received at least 3 percent in at least one of the three DNC-approved polls that count for the November debate released thus far.

"Kudos to the DNC for raising the thresholds in a fair and transparent manner as well," Yang tweeted shortly after the announcement.

Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and businessman Tom Steyer, both of whom qualified for the October debate, have not hit at least 3 percent in any of the three polls released thus far. Additionally, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is one poll away from making the October debate — she needs to earn 2 percent one more time before next week's deadline — but also has not reached 3 percent for the November debate.

Steyer's campaign said that he has already hit the increased donor requirement. "We’re excited to announce that the campaign has already surpassed the minimum donor threshold, and we are confident that we will meet the polling requirements before the deadline," campaign manager Heather Hargreaves said in a statement.

Klobuchar, O'Rourke and Castro have also all hit the new donor threshold, according to their respective campaigns.

An updated donor count for many of the candidates were not immediately available, but all of the aforementioned candidates have at least 130,000 unique donors. The remaining candidates who have not yet qualified for the October debate remain an even longer shot to make it on stage in November. Those on the outside looking in remain critical of the threshold.

"As we saw in a poll just this weekend, 90 percent of voters haven't decided who they are voting for," Shannon Beckham, a spokesperson for Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, said in a statement, "Yet the DNC is using polling to winnow the field even further, when it's voters and caucus-goers who should be determining our nominee."

David Siders and Nolan McCaskill contributed to this report.