Late Tuesday afternoon CNN announced an amendment to the rules for its debate scheduled for September 16.
CNN's original rules included time-specific polling data that did not accurately mirror current GOP primary field standings. In particular, Carly Fiorina's rapid rise in the polls.
Last week, a
spokeswoman from CNN said the network would not yield to candidate complaints, saying:
“Our criteria are totally appropriate and we have been absolutely transparent about them throughout. If the Fiorina campaign had an issue with them they could have raised it when we published them in May. They did not,” the spokeswoman said. “Revising the criteria on the eve of the debate at the demand of and solely for the benefit of one particular candidate is not something we have done in the past, and we will not do it now.”
Mounting pressure from news outlets, public figures, and Carly Fiorina's campaign seems to have caused CNN to reconsider.
The network explained that a lack of national polling data was to blame. With a significantly greater number of national polls taken during the same timeframe in previous election cycles, CNN claims they had no reason to believe this cycle would have rendered a polling deficiency.
Rather than look to national polling averages in data collected from July to September, CNN has amended the debate qualification criteria so that rankings will be decided based on polling data released from August 7 to September 10.