The fifth Democratic presidential primary debate next month will be moderated by an all-female panel, according to The Hill.
The debate, scheduled for November 20th and sponsored by the Washington Post and MSNBC, will have four female moderators: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s Kristen Welker, and the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker.
The debate will take place somewhere in Georgia, most likely Atlanta, although the exact location has not yet been confirmed. The Post claimed this was only the second primary debate in history to have an all-female panel.
The debate will be only two hours long, and is expected to feature the smallest number of candidates yet. The qualification criteria for this debate has increased yet again; in order to appear on-stage, a candidate must accumulate at least 165,000 individual campaign donors, with at least 600 unique donors per state in 20 states, and must achieve at least 3 percent in four or more national polls approved by the DNC.
A candidate may also qualify if, instead of the national polling criteria, they reach five percent or more in at least two polls out of the four early caucus states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina).
At this time, only eight candidates have qualified: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.), billionaire Tom Steyer (D-Calif.), entrepreneur Andrew Yang (D-N.Y.), Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, and Buttigieg have met the donor criteria and both sets of polling criteria, while Steyer, Yang, Booker, and Klobuchar have met the donor criteria and only the national polling threshold.
Three other candidates have met the donor criteria but have not yet achieved either of the polling criteria: Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro (D-Texas). O’Rourke has qualified in only two polls, Gabbard has achieved only one, and Castro has registered in zero national polls.