Battle for final spot in GOP debate: Chris Christie beating Rick Perry

Reporting from Washington —  With Fox News due to announce Tuesday which candidates will be onstage for the first debate of the Republican primary season, the fight for the final slot is a battle of governors: Rick Perry versus Chris Christie, and the Texan appears to be losing.

The GOP has 17 candidates who have announced that they’re seeking the nomination, so debate sponsors have to find some way to cull the field. Fox, the broadcast sponsor for Thursday’s session, announced in spring that 10 candidates would get to debate, picked based on who has the highest average standings in the five most recent national polls released by Tuesday.

So far, the most recent polls, including one released Monday evening by Fox, all tell pretty much the same story: Donald Trump in the lead, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and current Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

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After those three, the recent polls show five other candidates bunched fairly tightly, all getting support in the mid- to high single digits: Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon.

That accounts for eight slots, with three candidates consistently occupying the next tier: Perry, Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Whether by luck or smart tactics, Kasich announced his candidacy last month, just in time to be enjoying the usual announcement bounce in polls as the debaters get picked. The bounce is not much, but so far it has been enough to put him ahead of one or both of the others in three of the four most recent surveys.

In the Fox poll, Kasich had support of 3% of GOP voters, tied with Christie. Perry lagged behind at 1%. The poll, of 475 voters nationwide who said they were likely to vote in a Republican primary, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Bloomberg already has said it will release a poll Tuesday morning, and other news organizations may also have polls coming. But if the current pattern holds, Kasich would be in the debate, which will be held in his home state, along with Christie. Perry would join the lower tier of candidates at a forum a few hours before the debate.

Network officials have given themselves considerable wiggle room, however, on how to make the final decision. Although they’ve said they will average the most recent polls, they’ve left some key details undefined, such as how they will round off percentages, what they’ll consider to be a tie and whether they will use a simple arithmetical average or one that weights polls by sample size. Given that the candidates are tightly grouped together, those factors could all affect the outcome.

For more on politics and policy, follow @DavidLauter.

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