Republican presidential challenger Rand Paul said on Wednesday that he will make the cut-off for the main stage of the next GOP debate scheduled for Jan. 14, pointing to recent national polling that he says will put him over the threshold and keep him from the undercard debate.
"The good news is, it looks like we're actually making the criteria," Paul said on Fox News Wednesday morning, according to Politico. "There was a national poll out this week that had me in fifth place, only one point out of fourth place."
Paul said the debate would put him in a good position to "outperform polls" in the Iowa caucus, where his campaign has "a good ground game."
"We have a good ground game there, and we think we're going to do a lot better than the polls indicate," he said, Politico reported. "We have a lot of young people, college students, we have a lot of independents. A lot of people aren't showing up in polls, so we think we're going to outperform polls, and we're in it to win it. We actually do believe and wouldn't be doing this unless we thought we could win."
Just last week, Paul took a defiant tone, saying he would skip the undercard debate, should he not make the main stage.
"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," Paul declared in a radio interview with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, BuzzFeed reported. He added: "It's the kids' table, and at that table you're not considered to be a competitor, not considered to be having a chance."
Paul has struggled in the polls since the beginning of his campaign and currently sits in 7th place at 2.6 percent according to RealClear Politics' averages.
