Here’s everything you need to know about the July debates

Only a month after the first debates, the large field of 2020 Democrats is heading back to the stage for their second round of debates in July.

The second scheduled debate will be hosted by CNN on July 30 and 31 in Detroit (Michigan is a battle state that Trump narrowly won in 2016) at 8 pm Eastern — and qualifications for the debate are the same as the first.

As Vox’s Andrew Prokop explained, candidates will have to hit one of two metrics to qualify:

1) Polling: A candidate could qualify by hitting just 1 percent in three separate polls released between January and a cutoff point (June 12) before the first debate. These could be either national polls or polls of any of the first four primary or caucus states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina). They would, however, have to be from a list of 18 respected polling organizations.

2) Grassroots fundraising: Separately, a candidate could also qualify by raising money from at least 65,000 unique donors. And to ensure at least some geographic spread of support, they’d have to have at least 200 donors each in 20 states.

Because the qualification rules are the same, the crop of candidates who made the cut is roughly the same. The only exception is that California Rep. Eric Swalwell has dropped out and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has qualified since the first debate. That means the debate stage will still be crowded, with 10 candidates on camera per night. Here’s the lineup for each night, which CNN determined through a live televised drawing, in order onstage (from left):

July 30 debate

July 31 debate

Five candidates didn’t qualify for the debates:

It’s worth noting that although Gravel reportedly reached 65,000 unique donors, the DNC rules favor candidates who have met the polling threshold when more than 20 candidates have qualified.

As Prokop explained, all eyes will be on the interactions between the top candidates — Harris versus Biden and Warren versus Sanders. Harris and Biden are no strangers to confrontation: A viral moment of the first debates was when Harris questioned Biden about his record on busing. Prokop wrote:

Harris challenged Biden’s record on civil rights, elevating questions about how the former vice president will defend his decades-long record, and whether he’s in touch with today’s Democratic electorate. The exchange almost immediately doubled Harris’s support in polls, cementing her place among the top tier contenders, and seemingly revealing Biden’s weakness as a frontrunner.

Now, though, Biden will get a do-over. And that’s an important opportunity for him. He will have had ample time to prepare this time around, and could make a more spirited defense of his record, or challenge Harris’s caginess on whether or how she would really bring back busing. (And it would be difficult for Biden to handle the topic more poorly than he did last time.) But Harris is a formidable opponent who has damaged Biden already and will have the opportunity do more.

Meanwhile, Prokop wrote that the debates will give Warren and Sanders a chance to show voters they are the true progressive candidate of the 2020 race:

It’s Warren’s campaign that has been on the rise of late, as she’s effectively branded herself as the candidate with a substantive plan for (almost) everything. Sanders, meanwhile, has slipped a bit, from the clear second place behind Biden to something more like a three-way tie for second with Warren and Harris.

So now, Sanders has an opportunity to try and take Warren down a peg, and argue that he’s the candidate the party’s left flank should truly support. It’s unclear whether going on the offensive would be the best move at this point, though — the two could also decide to stress their areas of agreement, in contrast to the other top contenders.

Things will begin to change dramatically after the two-night July debate. The DNC significantly increased its standards to qualify for the third debate.

In September, it will be more difficult to make the cut: Candidates need at least 2 percent support in four polls and 130,000 unique donors (with at least 400 donors each in 20 states) to qualify.

The DNC reserved two nights for the September debate, but because of the higher threshold, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver estimates just eight candidates — Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, and Booker — would qualify for the September debate as of now. But a lot can change between now and then.