Andrew Yang Overtakes Beto with Two Percent Rating in Major Poll

ormer tech executive Andrew Yang reacts during the second night of the first Democratic pr
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Tech Entrepreneur and Democrat presidential hopeful Andrew Yang has crossed the finish line to qualify for the Party’s next debate with a two percent rating in a major poll.

Politico reported: 

Yang crossed the second of two required debate thresholds on Thursday when he polled at 2 percent in a Monmouth University poll in Iowa. He had previously received at least 2 percent in three other polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and has hit the required 130,000 unique donor mark.

At the other end of the spectrum, onetime Democratic phenom Beto O’Rourke was eclipsed by Yang in the first-in-the-nation voting state, clocking in at under 1 percent.

Yang is the ninth candidate to qualify for a pair of debates: one in mid-September and one sometime in October. He joins Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on stage.

The poll also noted that Tom Steyer was at 3 percent in a third qualifying poll for the fall debate.

The deadline for qualifying for the September Democrat debate is August 28.

“Both the September and October debates are expected to have fewer candidates qualify than the summer debates, in which 20 candidates took the stage,” Politico reported. “But the October debate may be larger than the September debate because candidates who qualify for September automatically qualify for October, and those who missed out on September have more time to qualify for October.”

The poll also reveals what issues are most important to Democrat voters. The Top Five are health care (55 percent), climate change (18 percent), beating Trump (15 percent), immigration (14 percent), and environment (12 percent).

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted on August 1 to August 4, 2019, with a statewide random sample of 681 Iowa voters from a list of  registered Democrat and unaffiliated voters who voted in at least one of the last two state primary elections or the last general election, or voters who have been registered to vote since November 2018. The poll results are based on 401 voters who are likely to attend the Democrat presidential caucuses in February 2020, either in person or virtually. This survey includes 176 voters who spoke to a live interviewer on a landline telephone and 225 voters contacted by a live interviewer on a cell phone.

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