Rand Paul did not participate at all in the last debate after he fell short of qualifying for the main stage. | AP Photo Rand Paul poised to make the cut for main debate stage

Sen. Rand Paul is poised to make his return to the main-stage Republican presidential debate on Thursday.

The cutoff for the polls that will be used to decide which candidates qualify for the main stage and which are bumped down to the undercard debate is 5 p.m. Tuesday. The Paul campaign earlier in the day announced a conference call “with political reporters this evening to discuss the 2016 election cycle, Iowa caucus, and upcoming RNC/Fox News debate.”


Fox News has set the same criteria for qualification as last week’s Fox Business News 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 former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at an average of 4 percent. Moreover, if another Iowa survey is released prior to Fox’s 5 p.m. deadline, the oldest poll that would drop out of the average is a Loras College poll that has Bush at 6 percent and Paul at 3 percent — making it even easier for Paul stay tied with Bush or leap-frog him.

The rest of the main debate stage is expected to include the seven candidates who also made it last time: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich.

Top Paul officials were optimistic Tuesday morning that he would also make the main-stage debate. “Looking good,” Paul campaign manager Chip Englander told POLITICO. “Our belief is that the next poll to be dropped would actually be Jeb’s best. So the last few polls we were in a bit of a precarious situation because we were losing polls that were good for us. But they were being replaced with polls that were equally good, so that was fine.”

Paul did not participate at all in the last debate after he fell short of qualifying for the main stage. Paul refused to participate in the undercard event, saying he had a “top-tier” campaign that deserved to be only on the main stage.