CNN’s not-top-10 debate criteria

In the first Republican primary debate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina achieved the impossible when she delivered a performance which was still echoing through Quicken Loans Arena three hours later.

Someone who isn’t even a politician stood on a stage with six other candidates — who’ve been governors and senators — and eviscerated them. The media noticed. The voters noticed. The polls have spoken.

That was never supposed to happen.

Kyle Cheney and Katie Glueck wrote for Politico that “Two weeks after the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, several candidates scraping the bottom of primary polls are still seething about their treatment — and ripping party leadership for what they describe as, at best careless, and at worst intentional, decisions that embarrassed them on national TV.”

{mosads}It was supposed to be a nonevent; the loser debate. A consolation platform for the non-contenders to say their piece and then drop silently off the edge of the election map. The empty arena created an atmosphere reminiscent of watching the pee-wee football championship played on an NFL field on Sunday morning. It was a giant stop sign directed at the bottom seven, but Fiorina blew right through it.

On the strength of her debate performance, and the overwhelming consensus that she won, Fiorina shot up from the bottom of the polls. Before the first debate, she had rarely polled in the top 10 in state or national polls. Since the debate, she has not polled outside the top 10.

Not one of the men who tried to stand in the ring with Fiorina at that debate has risen in the polls.

Now, instead of getting the opportunity to prove herself in the mainstage CNN debate, the only thing she is getting to prove is that CNN’s debate criteria made it impossible to crack the top 10. As of now, nine of the 11 polls being employed to decide the top 10 are from before the Fox News debate. Those nine polls have essentially hitched an anchor to seven candidates. There were supposed to be undercard debates; instead, CNN’s criteria has created undercard candidates.

Does CNN actually think they’ll be getting the top 10 candidates?

Ten national polls taken since the first debate, and all of them have Fiorina in the top 10.

Post-debate state polls show her tied for fifth in Wisconsin, Iowa and Florida, tied for sixth with former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) in Ohio and North Carolina, comfortably in fourth in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, third in Arizona — where she’s beating Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) She’s second only to front-runner Donald Trump in Michigan.

Out of 22 major state and national post-debate polls, Fiorina is top 10 in every single one. She is ahead of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) in both post-debate CNN-approved national polls and all 12 post-debate state polls.

Only new discoveries in the field of mathematics — formerly unknown techniques with the power to make big numbers small and small numbers big — could keep Fiorina out of the top 10 without using polling data from before the first debate. Fiorina is in the top ten; Christie is not.

CNN has three choices. They can fill their debate with the not-top-10, they can change their deeply flawed criteria or they can go on pretending that August is July.

Zipperer is assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College. Follow him on Twitter @eddiezipperer.