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CNN waives rules, lets Rick Perry debate

UPDATE: CNN's Sam Feist calls to say that contrary to the report by Talking Points Memo (below), Rick Perry has met the criteria for the debate on January 19. Per CNN criteria, a candidate qualifies for the debate if he averages 7 percent in three national polls in 2012. Feist says that Perry averages at least 7 percent based on a Gallup poll from January 3, a CBS poll from January 9, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll from January 10.

In the Gallup poll published January 3, Perry received 7 percent.

In the CBS poll published January 9, Perry received 6 percent AND 7 percent.*

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll published January 10, Perry received 7 percent.

*The source for all the confusion: When CBS published the results of its poll on January 9, it listed Rick Perry at 6 percent. However, the full release shows that Perry received 6 percent when those surveyed had an option to choose "Someone Else," and received 7 percent when those surveyed did not have that option. Because Perry received 7 percent in the latter poll, he qualifies for the CNN debate in South Carolina... by the skin of his teeth.

CNN has also reached out to TPM's Eric Kleefeld, who has written an update. Feist tells Kleefeld, as he told me, that even if you only give Perry 6 percent from the CBS poll, he'd still technically qualify:

If you average 7, 7 and 6, you get 6.67. And across the board, in polling methodology, you round up to get to the next digit. And so even if you were to insist - even if someone were to insist that we use CBS’s non-traditional methodology, in which case Governor Perry gets a 6, with the other two polls in which he is listed as 7, average to 6.67, yielding a 7.

Skin of his teeth.

EARLIER:

Talking Points Memo's Eric Kleefeld reports:

CNN now says that Rick Perry is being invited to their debate in South Carolina on January 19, two days before the big primary in which he hopes to make his last stand. This despite the fact that he has not met any of the requirements for participation that CNN made public last week. “Yes, Gov. Perry will be invited to next week’s CNN debate,” said Edie Emery, director of public relations for Turner Broadcasting Systems, in an e-mail to TPM. “He has met the criteria.” A follow-up e-mail to Emery, asking which criteria Perry has met, was not immediately returned. According to CNN’s criteria for inclusion, a candidate must get at least 4th place in either Iowa or New Hampshire, or get 7% support in at least three national Republican or three South Carolina primary polls released in January. The requirements were posted online last Tuesday afternoon, several hours before before the Iowa caucuses began later that night. Perry came in fifth place in Iowa, and sixth in New Hampshire. And currently, his national and South Carolina poll numbers do not show him meeting that threshold, either.

Read the full story.

UPDATE 2: CNN's Washington bureau chief Sam Feist emails on January 15 to note the CNN/ORC poll from 1/13 in which Rick Perry earned 9 percent, placing him definitively above the 7 percent aggregate required for CNN's Republican debate on January 19.