2016 Debate Watch: John Kasich Cracks Top 10

The needle hasn’t move all that much since our last post two weeks ago. After a bevy of polling, Donald Trump is still ascendant and most of the candidates expected to qualify for the rapidly approaching, primetime Fox News debate almost certainly will. (Perhaps it’s hard to believe, but the debate is only about a week away). And yet, there‘s been one key change-up in the debate-qualifying race. Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), after recently announcing his candidacy, has finally cracked the top ten for the first time. This puts him on the debate stage, of course, and therefore bumps Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) off:

Fox News has not clarified which pollsters they will use to calculate their rankings — although they have stipulated that they will average the “five most recent national polls.” Fortunately for Rick Perry and others, then, this is good news.

It means there’s still time to qualify.

Editor's note: The most recent national polls used to calculate these averages can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Interesting thought.

We'll see.