2020 Democratic Party presidential debates
Debates took place among candidates in the campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for the president of the United States in the 2020 presidential election.
There were a total of 29 major Democratic candidates. Of these, 23 candidates participated in at least one debate. Only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders participated in all the debates; Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren participated in all but the final debate.
Democratic Party debates
June 26, 2019
June 27, 2019
January 14, 2020
February 7, 2020
Linsey Davis
Monica Hernandez
David Muir
Adam Sexton
George Stephanopoulos
Incidents and controversies[edit]
Climate change debate[edit]
On April 22, 2019, Jay Inslee proposed that the DNC dedicate one of its presidential debates to climate change,[306] giving candidates a chance to elaborate in full detail on how they intend to implement climate action and achieve the goals presented by the Green New Deal (a progressive climate resolution proposed by Democratic members of the House of Representatives).[307] Recent polls of both Democratic voters and the electorate in general had identified this topic to be of the highest importance (for example, a CNN poll[308] found 80% of Democrats wanted presidential candidates to make climate change a top priority, and a Morning Consult poll[309] of registered voters nationwide found that 63% said it's either important or a top priority for Congress to pass a bill to address climate change). Despite support from seven other candidates (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, Michael Bennet, John Delaney[310] and Seth Moulton[311]), several progressive and environmental groups (Sierra Club, CREDO Action, Sunrise Movement, Friends of the Earth Action, Public Citizen, 350 Action, MoveOn, Youth Climate Strike), at least two dozen Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate,[307] and over 52,000 signatories of a petition,[312] the DNC turned down the idea of limiting some of their debates to only one debate topic.[313][2] On June 29, 2019, however, the DNC referred to a committee a proposal "calling for an official debate on climate change".[314] On August 22, the resolutions committee voted to reject the proposal.[315]
Steve Bullock's qualification for first debate[edit]
After Steve Bullock received 1% in an open-ended ABC News/The Washington Post poll, controversy arose as the DNC's official qualification rules, published on February 14 and updated on May 9,[57] did not state whether open-ended polls would count towards qualification. The DNC later stated during rule guidance given on June 10 and 11,[103] that "polls based on open-ended questions will not be considered". This additional rule was initially orally communicated between DNC chairman Tom Perez and the Bullock campaign in March 2019, and was only publicly confirmed via a statement to a Politico reporter on June 6,[60] but was never confirmed in writing by any primary DNC sources ahead of the qualification deadline.[316]
On June 12, the Bullock campaign wrote a certification letter to the DNC claiming that Bullock qualified for participation in the first debate through the polling criteria (as they believed the open-ended poll from ABC News/The Washington Post should be counted as Bullock's third qualifying poll, according to the official published rules).[317] If Bullock had been deemed a qualifying candidate by the DNC, then 21 total candidates would have qualified by the polling criteria. However, the DNC explicitly limited the debate stage to 20 candidates, so that would have triggered tiebreak rules. Bullock and Eric Swalwell were tied for the 20th spot with each candidate having 1% polling averages and three qualifying polls with exactly 1% support. In that scenario, the DNC would have had to accept inviting 21 candidates, or invent a supplementing final tiebreak rule (for example, drawing lots for the last spot, or deciding the tie by their number of unique donors).[316] However, Bullock's certification letter was rejected and he failed to qualify for the first debate,[48] though he qualified for the second debate.[105]