Repeater
Regular Member
The final debate of the Virginia Governor's race will not include Libertarian Candidate Robert Sarvis.
WDBJ:
WDBJ:
WDBJ7 and Virginia Tech are co-hosting a debate between the two major party candidates for governor on Thursday, October 24 at 7:00 p.m. As part of the negotiations regarding guidelines for the debate, the two campaigns agreed to language setting an average polling threshold that opened the door for the third party candidate to participate in the debate.
The language both campaigns agreed to is as follows:
The third party candidate will be invited to participate in the debate if he is polling at 10% or above in major statewide independent polls released within the period three weeks prior to October 10. The decision concerning eligibility will be made by WDBJ7 in consultation with political analysts Harry Wilson from Roanoke College and Bob Denton from Virginia Tech and will rely heavily on the averages of major polls as listed on www.realclearpolitics.com.
October 10 was agreed upon as a deadline for the third party candidate to reach the threshold to give candidates two weeks ahead of the debate to prepare and the hosting organizations time to set the format and staging for the event.
As of this date, the third party candidate is polling at 9.0% based on the averages on realclearpolitics.com and would, therefore, not meet the guidelines agreed upon by the campaigns.