AP Photo O'Malley squeaks into Democratic debate

Martin O’Malley avoided an embarrassing blow to his floundering presidential campaign on Thursday when NBC News announced he would be invited to Sunday’s Democratic primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina.

NBC had set a floor of 5 percent in recent polls nationally and in the first three states in the nominating process: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, was well short of that threshold in national polls, and in New Hampshire and South Carolina. But he was hovering around 5 percent in Iowa — dangerously close to missing the cut and setting up a head-to-head matchup between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.


The most recent Iowa poll, from The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, had O’Malley at 4 percent. That gave him an average of 4.6 percent in the most recent polling there, according to POLITICO’s calculations. Sources had indicated when the criteria were released last week that NBC would likely round upward if O’Malley were close to 5 percent.

NBC’s release Thursday afternoon didn’t specify whether the network rounded O’Malley’s numbers up for him to qualify for the debate, which is being co-hosted by YouTube. The debate will air on NBC affiliates across the country at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday.



This article tagged under: 2016 Elections