Qualified with poll and donor requirements Buttigieg Sanders Harris Qualified with polls Qualified with donors Warren Biden Klobuchar Booker Castro Yang O’Rourke Gillibrand Inslee Hickenlooper Gabbard Delaney Ryan Swalwell Not currently qualified Williamson Messam Moulton Qualified with poll and donor requirements Buttigieg Sanders Harris Qualified with polls Qualified with donors Warren Biden Klobuchar Booker Castro Yang O’Rourke Gillibrand Inslee Hickenlooper Gabbard Delaney Ryan Swalwell Not currently qualified Williamson Messam Moulton Qualified with poll and donor requirements Buttigieg Sanders Qualified with polls Qualified with donors Harris Warren Biden Klobuchar Booker Castro Yang O’Rourke Gillibrand Inslee Hickenlooper Gabbard Delaney Ryan Swalwell Not currently qualified Williamson Messam Moulton Qualified with poll and donor requirements Qualified with polls Qualified with donors Not currently qualified

As you may have heard, the first Democratic presidential debate will be split across two nights, June 26 and 27, because there are so many candidates: 20 and counting.

What you may not have heard is that the debate qualifications are turning out to be relatively easy to meet — to the point that they may cause embarrassment for some Democrats.

First, let’s lay out the qualifications: A candidate either has to receive donations from 65,000 people (including 200 donors apiece in 20 states) or has to register 1 percent support in three polls. Only polls from a preset list of organizations are accepted, and candidates cannot count two polls from the same pollster in the same place.

The potential for embarrassment is this: According to a New York Times analysis, eight candidates will qualify based on polling but not, as of now, based on donors. Hitting 1 percent support in a handful of polls is a breeze for most candidates. But these eight Democrats risk appearing like they are skating onto the debate stage because of a really low poll threshold, not because of appeal among grass-roots donors.

The Times analysis found that if the debate was held today, 17 of the 20 candidates would make it to the stage. The qualifiers will be divided into two groups at random. This means that a number of candidates at the back of the pack in polling and fund-raising will still share a stage with the heavyweights in the race.

National Polling Average Number of Unique Donors Note: Candidates with a national polling average of less than 1 percent, using D.N.C.-approved polls, are not shown. Unique donor data was provided by the campaigns. Candidates whose campaigns did not provide exact figures are not shown.

The inclusivity is intentional: Democratic leaders don’t want to be accused of favoring certain candidates over others, as they were in 2016. But the party leaders might ultimately have to exclude some candidates if they want to stick to their self-imposed limit of 20 participants in the debates. Several other politicians — among them Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana and Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor of Georgia — might still run.

Where Each Candidate Stands Unique Donors Unique Polls Over 1% Qualified for Debate Bernie Sanders 563,359 9 Yes Pete Buttigieg 158,568 9 Yes Kamala Harris 138,000 9 Yes Elizabeth Warren 134,902 9 Yes Joseph R. Biden Jr. 96,926 9 Yes Amy Klobuchar >65,000 9 Yes Beto O’Rourke >65,000 9 Yes Andrew Yang 101,352 7 Yes Tulsi Gabbard >65,000 3 Yes Cory Booker No data available 9 Yes Julián Castro 56,476 7 Yes Kirsten Gillibrand <65,000 6 Yes Jay Inslee <65,000 4 Yes John Hickenlooper No data available 4 Yes John Delaney <65,000 3 Yes Tim Ryan <65,000 3 Yes Eric Swalwell <65,000 3 Yes Marianne Williamson 51,300 1 No Wayne Messam No data available 1 No Seth Moulton <65,000 0 No Note: Unique donor data was provided by campaigns. Some campaigns did not provide exact donor counts or did not respond to requests for data. Polls are counted according to the D.N.C.’s rules

If more than 20 candidates qualify, the D.N.C. has said it will prioritize those who met both the donor threshold and the polling threshold. If more winnowing is needed, polling averages will come into play, and that’s where some candidates could really be in trouble: Kirsten Gillibrand, for instance, clears the “three polls of at least 1 percent” bar just as surely as Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren do, but her average is much lower.