Breaking: Fox News Announces List Of Ten GOP Candidates Who Will Appear In First Debate

Fox News has decided which of the 17 GOP candidates they have chosen to appear on stage during the first Republican debate for the 2016 presidential campaign.

The first Republican debate for the 2016 presidential race for the White House is on Thursday. Fox News is hosting the event, and the rumors surrounding how the conservative cable news network decided to choose the “top ten” candidates have been swirling.

Even Fox News admitted as late as yesterday they had no idea specifically how they were going to decide which candidates are worthy, other than the barometer they first said they would use: an average of five recent polls.

Politico reported Monday night that a “Fox News executive disputed that the network had decided which polls to include.”

“As we’ve said all along, we will base the top 10 on the five most recent polls, leading up to 5 p.m. on Tuesday,” said Fox News executive vice president Michael Clemente. “Since we don’t know who is releasing polls, nor when that polling was done, nor the methodology, it would be impossible for anyone to know what polls will be used.”

But Fox’s choice of polls determined the choice of candidates. They had the option of which polls to use, and which polls to not use. For example, Fox could have chosen to exclude all polls from educational institutions, which are considered equal to other commercial polls.

Finally, Fox News has made its decision, and here are the ten candidates who will appear on stage Thursday night at 9:00 PM EDT, per Fox News:

Real estate magnate Donald Trump; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. 

Among those not in the main debate are Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore. There will be a televised forum which all seven can attend, several hours before the main event.

 

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr and a CC license