North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum qualifies for first GOP primary debate

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has qualified for the first GOP presidential primary debate, according to POLITICO’s tracking. He’s the seventh candidate to punch a ticket to Milwaukee next month.

Burgum, a one-time software executive who first ran for governor in 2016, has poured his personal wealth into the campaign, helping to propel him onto the debate stage on Aug. 23 alongside other candidates who have been in the national spotlight for much longer.

Burgum has spent millions of his own money into his campaign, blanketing Iowa and New Hampshire with television ads that have attracted a pocket of support in those states.

But likely hundreds of thousands more went to another unusual play: Promising those who gave his campaign a buck a $20 gift card in return, all in an effort for Burgum to meet a requirement set up by the Republican National Committee that candidates have 40,000 unique donors, with 200 in 20 different states or territories.

That gambit worked, with Burgum saying he crossed the donor threshold last week.

“Governor Burgum is looking forward to sharing his focus on the economy, energy and national security at the August debate,” Burgum spokesperson Lance Trover said in a statement. “In less than 7 weeks, Governor Burgum has exceeded all the requirements for the debate.”

Burgum qualified on Tuesday, when he passed the polling threshold by hitting 1 percent in a national poll released by Morning Consult. He previously notched 6 percent in a University of New Hampshire Granite State poll and 3 percent in a Fox Business poll in Iowa, along with 1 percent in a national survey from the Louisiana-based JMC Analytics and Polling.

Six other candidates have already qualified, according to POLITICO’s tracking: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and Tim Scott.

But there are questions if all seven of the qualified candidates will show up — especially the former president. Trump has been publicly waffling on if he wants to make the trip, seemingly unwilling to give other contenders a chance to take a shot at the frontrunner and potentially improve their standing.

Other candidates could yet make the stage as well. Former Vice President Mike Pence and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson have both hit the polling threshold, according to POLITICO’s analysis — but neither man has hit 40,000 donors.

POLITICO’s tracking of debate qualifications has automatically included surveys from two nationally-known pollsters — the University of New Hampshire and Fox Business Network. POLITICO has also included surveys from Morning Consult after the RNC confirmed that those polls met the methodological requirements to be included.

A spokesperson for the RNC, however, did not respond to repeated questions from POLITICO on if the JMC Analytics and Polling survey, along with other recent polls, met the methodological rules.

Burgum and other candidates, argue that the JMC poll counts — and a plain reading of the RNC rules by POLITICO agrees with that interpretation.

Hutchinson similarly hit the polling threshold with the inclusion of the JMC poll, which his campaign also asserted met the requirements. POLITICO is including polls in its debate tracker that, on their face, meet the methodological requirements — even if they come from a lesser-known pollster.

POLITICO's decision to include — or not include — a poll in our debate analysis is not an endorsement of the veracity of any particular pollster or methodology, only a reading of the RNC debate rules.