Larry J. Sabato is university professor of politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which publishes the online, free Crystal Ball politics newsletter every Thursday, and a contributing editor at Politico Magazine. His most recent book is The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.

It will be easy this year to identify the biggest losers in the GOP debates. They will be the candidates who aren’t on the stage.

With a record 17 prominent candidates vying for the Republican nomination (so far), no system for determining admission to the debate stage will please everyone. But the GOP can certainly do better than the statistically unsound procedures announced by Fox News and CNN. These rules will senselessly reward gimmicky candidates like reality-TV star Donald Trump and punish serious, viable ones like Ohio Gov. John Kasich.


To qualify for Fox’s August debate and CNN’s September one, recent national polls must rank a Republican candidate in the top 10. Those who fail to make the cut will attend separate debates guaranteed to have a fraction of the viewership and a fraction of the potential payoff.

As polling experts of all ideological stripes have pointed out, the margin of error in surveys is so large that it is statistically impossible to determine who should fill the last two or three spots in the top 10. Effectively, all the polling bottom-dwellers (those who have one percent to four percent) are tied—and a good chunk of the field is now in this category. Just this week, the Ted Cruz campaign, whose candidate is ranked eighth according to the Real Clear Politics average but is in a decent position to make the first debate, questioned Fox News’ debate standards and suggested it select candidates only through polls that interviewed more than 1,000 primary voters and were conducted via telephone.

Cruz has a point: Both the candidates and the voters are not well served by the current jerrybuilt system for debate inclusion. It is going to force some candidates into a frenzy of costly, premature activities, from splashy media events to paid advertisements to controversial pronouncements. For example, a Super PAC supporting Rick Perry is launching a national ad buy, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as a way to boost Perry’s poll numbers and help get him on the debate stage. These stunts are designed to one-up opponents and add a couple of artificial, temporary percentage points in the polls. Our presidential selection process is insane enough without adding another crazy layer. Did we finally get rid of the meaningless Iowa straw poll only to substitute wild early debate maneuvering?

And don’t think that many presidential contenders will forgo the numbers-inflating bluster. The stakes are simply too high: If a candidate can’t even make it to the debate stage, why would rational donors and volunteers continue giving money and time to what is apparently a lost cause? It’s hard to look presidential languishing at home while your opponents are discussing foreign policy and social security on national television.

Likewise, appearing in a debate can bolster the most unlikely of candidates. Not infrequently in past elections, those near the bottom of the early polls got their chance to move up in part because of debate performances. For instance, candidates like Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich generated positive news coverage (and polling bumps) following well-received debate performances during the 2012 cycle (while Perry hurt himself with debate gaffes).

With almost seven months to go before the first votes are expected to be cast in Iowa, poll results are mostly a reflection of name identification. The more outrageous one’s pronouncements, the more media attention a politician will receive, and the higher his or her polling rank. Just look at Donald Trump, currently polling at the top of the field, who has spent the past week or so making news attacking Hispanics and talking about his billions.

Does it really make any sense from the GOP’s perspective to include Trump and Ben Carson, who are both currently in the qualifying group of 10 even though neither has ever been elected to anything, while potentially excluding low-polling Kasich, the popular two-term governor of the key swing state of Ohio? Just as questionable, should networks (rather than the political parties) be in the business of picking debate participants? Fox and CNN will deny it, but their favoring some contenders over others may possibly end a few candidacies prematurely—on the basis of spurious numerical distinctions, no less.

Fortunately, there is an easy, fair solution that can be quickly adopted. Invite all the candidates with at least one percent in the polling averages or who are current or former governors or senators (so as to add former governors Jim Gilmore of Virginia and George Pataki of New York, who are not polling at 1 percent but who have paid enough dues to the party to merit inclusion) in the initial prime-time debates. To reduce the crowded stage, have two back-to-back debates, the first from 8 to 9:30 pm and the second from 9:30 to 11 pm. Choose by lottery half the candidates who will comprise the first debate, with the others placed in the second debate—depending on the number of candidates, one debate might have one more participant than the other.

If both Fox and CNN adopt this arrangement, the selection process would almost certainly produce four different combinations of candidates going head-to-head in the August and September events. Or perhaps the CNN face-off could switch up the candidates in some reasonable fashion to ensure variety and feature very different combos from the earlier Fox debate.

To add to the drama, build a larger audience, and test the candidates’ abilities to adapt to unanticipated circumstances, each network should choose the lineup of candidates almost at the last minute, after all the contenders have gathered at the site. Have the moderators or special political guests or one of the handful of Republican-leaning Hollywood celebrities pull names from a bowl in a televised pre-debate moment. This unpredictable twist will force candidates to think on their feet, because they won’t know whose other feet will be planted at the lecterns next to them until shortly before the debate begins. There could actually be a few moments of unrehearsed spontaneity as a result. Shocking!

This inclusive format should only apply to the leadoff debates. If minor candidates can’t generate more support by October, it is rational to start eliminating the worst laggards. But it’s wrong not to give everyone a fair shot or to effectively end campaigns before the horserace officially begins.

It’s not too late to start off this cycle’s debates in an equitable and exciting fashion, while setting a good precedent for the future. And it might even make the debates must-see TV.

Include them all!