Who will make the fifth Democratic debate?

The top five — former Vice President Joe Biden; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — are all but guaranteed to make the stage. They have already met the donor threshold and are just one poll away from qualifying. In addition, Sen. Cory Booker is halfway to the four-poll threshold already, but his campaign says he is still stuck between 130,000 and 165,000 donors. Six other candidates have met the donor threshold, but it looks like the polling threshold may be more of a struggle for them.

Obviously, we can’t see into the future to know whether there will be enough polls out there for the likes of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke or Andrew Yang to make the debate. But we can do the next-best thing: Use the polls over the last two months as a stand-in. In other words, if the qualifying period for the fifth debate were, say, July 23 to Sept. 23,4 how much further would the debate stage be winnowed? Here’s a look at who would qualify for the debate under this hypothetical…

Just seven candidates would make the debate — down from a likely 11 or 12 candidates who will grace the stage in the October debate. However, some candidates would have come quite close to qualifying. For instance, Sen. Amy Klobuchar would have been just one poll shy; she has reached 3 percent support in three qualifying polls over the past two months and has reportedly also reached the 165,000-donor mark. Notably, Booker would also fall just short of both the donor and polling requirements (only three pollsters have put him at 3 percent or greater over the past two months).