Carly Fiorina's campaign team is furious that despite her top-10 polling since the first GOP primary debate, she still might not make the top-tier at the second, CNN-hosted face-off.
"Despite being solidly in the top 10 by every measure, the political establishment is still rigging the game to keep Carly off the main debate stage next month," complained Carly for President's deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores on
Medium.com.
Flores explains CNN has decided it'll average polls going back to July 16 to determine the top-tier candidates from the field of 17 for its GOP debate next month.
"Carly would easily make this debate if there were a consistent number of polls from one week to the next, but that’s not the case," Flores writes.
"In the three weeks before the first debate, CNN will be counting nine polls. In the three weeks since the debate, they will only be counting two. By simply averaging these polls together, CNN will be weighting the three weeks of polling before the debate more than three times as heavily as the three weeks of polling after Carly won the first debate."
The Huffington Post notes the seven candidates who didn't make the top-tier for the Aug. 6 Fox News-hosted debate – which, along with Fiorina, included Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rick Santorum – "were really only going to get one shot at getting into the top tier."
Fiorina
was widely credited with winning the so-called "happy hour" debate.
"In the three national polls that have been released since the debate, Carly is between 4th and 7th place," Flores writes, and has been in the in the top-10 in every state poll since Aug. 6.
"By giving such weight to polls from what is, for all intents and purposes, a bygone age, CNN is making it much harder for Fiorina to capitalize on the momentum she's earned,"
the Huffington Post reports.
And it sends a bad message to potential debate watchers too.
"Putting her back in the also-ran division will send the message to voters that there's no point to tuning in to that lesser competition, and that overcoming that interesting and daunting challenge … is meaningless," the Huffington Post writes.
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