Julián Castro received 2 percent in his fourth poll Tuesday, and has already hit the 130,000 donor mark required to qualify for the next debates. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images 2020 elections Castro becomes 10th candidate to qualify for fall debates

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro has qualified for the fall Democratic primary debates, the becoming the 10th candidate to do so.

Castro received 2 percent in a CNN/SSRS national poll released Tuesday. To qualify for the debates, candidates must get at least 2 percent in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and donations from 130,000 unique donors. Castro had already gotten 2 percent in three polls, and his campaign said he has already hit the donor mark.


Castro is the 10th candidate to qualify for the two fall debates, joining Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang on stage.

In the CNN poll , Biden led the Democratic field with 29 percent, followed by Sanders at 15 percent and Warren at 14 percent.

Buttigieg and Harris are tied for fourth place at 5 percent each, and O'Rourke has 3 percent, the last candidate above that mark.

Additional candidates have only another eight days to qualify for the Sept. 12 debate. The DNC said it will limit the stage to 10 candidates, so if an additional candidate qualifies, a second night of debate will be held Sept. 13.

Billionaire Tom Steyer is the next most likely candidate to qualify for the fall debate, needing just one additional poll after clearing the donor mark last week. Steyer was at 1 percent in the new CNN poll.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii also picked up a qualifying poll on Tuesday, scoring 2 percent in CNN's national survey. This is her second qualifying poll, and she has already hit the donor mark.

Biden is up 7 percentage points from another a CNN poll in late June, which showed him in first place with 22 percent support.

Tuesday’s poll results also show Harris backsliding. She suffered a 12-point decrease in support from the June CNN survey, conducted in the days immediately after the first primary debate, at which she laced into Biden.

Both of the fall debates are expected to have fewer participants than the summer debates, at which 20 candidates took the stage across two nights in June and July. But the October debate could end up larger than the September debate. Candidates who qualify for September are automatically in the October debate, and those who missed out on September have more time to qualify for October.

The October debate qualification period will close two weeks before that debate is held. Details for the October debate, including its date and host, have not yet been announced.

The CNN poll was conducted via telephone from August 15-18, surveying 1,001 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. For the subsample of 402 Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, the margin of error is 6.1 percentage points.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled the name of the CNN/SSRS national poll.