‘PBS NewsHour,’ Politico To Host December Democratic Debate In Los Angeles

PBS NewsHour and Politico will host the December Democratic debate in Los Angeles on Dec. 19, the two news outlets announced on Friday.

The debate will be held at UCLA, with a set of moderators to be announced.

The Democratic National Committee also raised the threshold for candidates to qualify for the debate. Candidates must receive 4 percent or more in at least four polls, which can be national polls or single state polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada. They also must have at least 200,000 unique donors.

The next debate will take place in Georgia on Nov. 20, with MSNBC and The Washington Post as hosts. The DNC also raised the threshold for that debate, to 3 percent support in at least four polls or 5 percent in at least two polls conducted in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada. The donor threshold was set at 165,000.

Yet the more stringent qualification requirements for the November debate don’t appear to be considerably shrinking the field of candidates who will make it to the debate stage. On Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) became the ninth candidate to qualify for that debate, according to Politico’s tracking. The last debate had 12 candidates participating.

The debates have given networks a ratings bounce, but the most recent debate, sponsored by CNN this month, was the lowest rated this cycle. The audience for the event was 8.34 million viewers. The second night of the first debate, hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo in June, drew 18.1 million viewers, the highest so far.