The DNC formally notified the campaigns Thursday that their candidates had qualified for the debate. Final lineup set for sole night of ABC Democratic primary debate:
The final lineup for the third Democratic debate is set for a single night in Houston in two weeks on Sept. 12.
The podium order — where the candidates will stand on the debate stage in relation to each other — was determined by polling averages, based on the last 10 polls certified for qualification by the DNC with the highest polling candidates near the center.
The debate format will be one minute and 15 seconds for direct responses to questions and 45 seconds for responses and rebuttals. Candidates will have the opportunity to deliver opening statements, but there will be no closing statements.
As previously announced, ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, ABC News “World News Tonight” Anchor and Managing Editor David Muir, ABC News Correspondent Linsey Davis and Univision Anchor Jorge Ramos will moderate.
The debate will be held at Texas Southern University, a public, historically black university, and will air from 8 to 11 p.m. ET across ABC, Univision with a Spanish translation, locally on KTRK-TV and on ABC News Live. The streaming channel is available on the ABCNews.com, Good Morning America and FiveThirtyEight websites and mobile phone apps, as well as Hulu Live, The Roku Channel, Facebook Watch, AppleTV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube, Apple News, and Twitter.
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In order to qualify for the September debate, candidates needed to cross both the polling and grassroots funding thresholds. Candidates must have received 2% or more support in at least four national polls or polls conducted in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and/or Nevada and have been publicly released between June 28 and August 28.
Any candidates’ four qualifying polls must have been sponsored by one or more of the following organizations approved by the DNC: The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, the Des Moines Register, Fox News, Monmouth University, NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Quinnipiac University, University of New Hampshire, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post and Winthrop University. They also needed to be conducted by different organizations or — if by the same organization — had to be in different geographical areas.
Candidates also needed to receive donations from at least 130,000 unique donors over the course of the election cycle, with a minimum of 400 unique donors per state in at least 20 states. Qualifying donations must have been received by 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 28 for the September debate.
