Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley

The candidates who are not on the debate stage tonight are still trying to make their case to voters, but face the challenge of being out of the almost-literal spotlight tonight. Some are also starting to be more candid about their prospects.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is pitching himself as a moderate conservative alternative to Trump, is in the difficult position of having been onstage at last month’s debate – and then not qualifying for tonight’s event.

Instead of trekking to California, Hutchinson spoke in Detroit this morning, not far from where Trump, who’s off the debate stage by choice, is holding a rally tonight. "I'm here, in Detroit, because I want to debate. Donald Trump is here in Detroit tonight because he wants to avoid a debate,” Hutchinson said at the presser.

Media attention is largely focused elsewhere today; only four cameras were at Hutchinson's event, according to ABC News campaign reporters Libby Cathey and Fritz Farrow.
Hutchinson wrote earlier this week that he is going to try to “increase my polling numbers to 4% in an early state before Thanksgiving,” setting a self-imposed benchmark for himself without directly saying whether he would withdraw or not if he doesn’t make it there.

He’s not the only one having a moment of campaign contemplation. Fellow offstage candidate and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd wrote today that he’ll continue campaigning, with a focus on New Hampshire, but that “our campaign is at an inflection point.” And last month, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez suspended his campaign about a week after the first debate aired. We’ll have to see if others follow in his footsteps after the dust settles from tonight, but it looks like Hutchinson and Hurd plan on staying in the game for now.

—Oren Oppenheim of ABC News

Ramaswamy remains one of the higher-polling GOP contenders. But the first debate didn’t alter his position in the race as a long-shot to win the Republicans nomination — although that is an apt descriptor for anyone not named Trump right now.

—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538

If Trump remains in the race until the convention, the GOP primary is not likely to be very close. While polls this early are not perfect predictions of presidential primaries, they are still a pretty solid guide.

But to figure out just how strong Trump’s odds of winning are, we can’t only look at the current national polls. Instead, we have to consult historical campaign dynamics (and ideally the reliability of state-level polls, too). In late August, we did some of this work for a piece on the inevitability (or lack thereof) of a Trump nomination. The math suggests that Trump has something around an 80 percent chance of winning the primary — though the precise number depends on how well we think historical polling records will inform the accuracy of polls for this cycle. This cycle is unprecedented in several ways, such as a former president running for his party’s nomination and the front-runner faces four sets of criminal indictments. We concluded that there is room for another candidate to stage a comeback.

But the door to a non-Trump nominee closes as time goes on. Primary elections are path-dependent contests; if a candidate can do well in Iowa, that may catapult him or her to success later on. But if the other candidates do poorly compared to expectations, and Republican voters wind up concluding Trump is their best option to beat Biden and the other candidates are all a bunch of losers in a nine-way tie for second, the contest will be over before Super Tuesday.

—Analysis by G. Elliott Morris of 538

Before tonight’s debate kicks off, 538, The Washington Post and Ipsos partnered once again to ask 5,002 likely Republican voters which issues are most important to them when deciding which candidate to vote for in the primaries, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel.

Of the 20 issues that we asked about, voters were most concerned about “getting inflation or increasing costs under control” (54 percent), a topic that Republican voters have been concerned about since at least the 2022 midterms, according our a previous collaboration with Ipsos. Among likely Republican primary voters, concern over inflation remains high since before last month’s debate, when 53 percent of respondents said it was among the most important issues to their vote, despite the addition of a few more topics to our questionnaire. Other issues that were top of mind for voters were “controlling immigration” (40 percent), “ability to beat Joe Biden” (23 percent) and “someone fighting against liberalism and the woke agenda” (22 percent).

If tonight’s debate touches upon those top issues, voters might get some clarity on who they are considering voting for when primary season comes around.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538