Let them debate!

[Commentary] It will be easy this year to identify the biggest losers in the GOP debates. They will be the candidates who aren’t on the stage. As polling experts of all ideological stripes have pointed out, the margin of error in surveys is so large that it is statistically impossible to determine who should fill the last two or three spots in the top 10. Effectively, all the polling bottom-dwellers (those who have one percent to four percent) are tied -- and a good chunk of the field is now in this category. Does it really make any sense from the GOP’s perspective to include Trump and Ben Carson, who are both currently in the qualifying group of 10 even though neither has ever been elected to anything, while potentially excluding low-polling Kasich, the popular two-term governor of the key swing state of Ohio?

Fortunately, there is an easy, fair solution that can be quickly adopted. Invite all the candidates with at least one percent in the polling averages or who are current or former governors or senators (so as to add former governors Jim Gilmore of Virginia and George Pataki of New York, who are not polling at 1 percent but who have paid enough dues to the party to merit inclusion) in the initial prime-time debates. To reduce the crowded stage, have two back-to-back debates, the first from 8 to 9:30 pm and the second from 9:30 to 11 pm. Choose by lottery half the candidates who will comprise the first debate, with the others placed in the second debate -- depending on the number of candidates, one debate might have one more participant than the other. If both Fox and CNN adopt this arrangement, the selection process would almost certainly produce four different combinations of candidates going head-to-head in the August and September events. Or perhaps the CNN face-off could switch up the candidates in some reasonable fashion to ensure variety and feature very different combos from the earlier Fox debate.

[Larry Sabato is a university professor of politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics]