After being left off the main stage last time, Rand Paul will have another shot in the next Republican debate. | Getty Rand Paul back on main stage for Fox debate

The main stage at Fox News Channel’s Republican presidential primary debate on Thursday night will feature as many as eight candidates — including the return of Rand Paul, who had been booted because of low poll numbers two weeks ago.

The field of candidates invited to Thursday’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa, is comprised of the same seven candidates who participated in the previous debate – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich – plus Paul, who qualified because of his standing in the most recent polls in Iowa.


Trump, however, said he most likely would not take part, and his campaign manager affirmed that Trump would skip the event.

Campaign manager Cory Lewandowski said steps were being made to hold a competing event to the debate. “We’ll have an event here in Iowa, with potentially another network, to raise money for Wounded Warriors and Fox will go from having probably 24 million viewers for the debate to, you know, 2 million viewers,” Lewandowski said.

Paul, in a conference call with reporters Tuesday night, said the news that he made the main stage debate showed his decision to skip the last undercard debate was the right call.

“I think it shows that we made the right decision not to accept any kind of billing as second tier,” Paul said, adding “we're glad that the networks agree with us this time around. We're on an upswing with most of the polls in Iowa. This is a good place to be. We think we're rising at just the right time and then we'll see if we can get our youth vote to get out. If we motivate the youth vote to get out that's not counted currently counted in the polling I think we could be in for a surprise in Iowa.”

The Paul campaign, ahead of the announcement, was optimistic that the Kentucky senator would make it into the main stage debate.

“Looking good,” Paul campaign manager Chip Englander told POLITICO earlier in the day.

Paul has maintained that his is a “top-tier” presidential campaign, and polling showing him near the very bottom of the field doesn’t capture the momentum of his presidential bid.

The debate airs at 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday on Fox News Channel. (Trump has threatened to sit out the debate, citing what he describes as unfair treatment from Megyn Kelly, one of the Fox News moderators, but on Tuesday morning he said he'd "probably" be there.)

There will be an undercard debate, beginning at 7 p.m. The candidates invited to that debate are Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore; the former Virginia governor is making his first appearance in a debate since he participated in the first undercard last August.

Fox News has set the same criteria for qualification as the Jan. 14 Fox Business Network debate: the top six candidates in national polls, plus any other candidates in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Those rankings are determined by averages of the five most recent national polls conducted by live telephone interviewers.

According to POLITICO’s calculations, while Paul is outside the top six nationally, the Kentucky senator is currently tied for fifth place in Iowa with Bush at an average of 4 percent.