Eight candidates qualified for a spot on the stage: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Missing from the event was the primary's early front-runner: former President Donald Trump, who declined to participate and instead released a pre-recorded interview with Tucker Carlson.
ABC News and FiveThirtyEight live-blogged every major moment and highlight from the debate, aired on Fox News, with FiveThirtyEight providing analysis and a closer look at the polling and data behind the politicians. PolitiFact made real-time fact checks of key statements.
Your humble fact-checker is reporting for duty. I’m Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of PolitiFact. We’re excited to help sort out fact from fiction during tonight’s debate. I’m not omniscient — in case you’re wondering. PolitiFact has a team of more than 30 fact-checkers that has been scrutinizing the candidates’ remarks for months. And wouldn’t you know it, candidates tend to repeat themselves on debate night. I’ll be popping in when we see something that warrants more context or a correction.
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact
Aug 23, 2023, 7:40 PM EDT
Voters remain dissatisfied with the economy
Why are voters so dissatisfied with Biden’s economy?
That’s one of the questions that will shape the 2024 race as Republicans gear up to select a presidential challenger. Right now, only 36 percent of American adults approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, according to an AP-NORC poll from Aug. 10-14. Similarly, a Fox News poll from Aug. 11-14 found that only a quarter of American voters say Biden’s policies have made the economy better. Some of this is affected by partisanship: A large majority of Republicans disapprove of his handling of the economy, but Democrats aren’t over the moon either, with only about two-thirds approving, according to the AP poll.
It’s tempting to think this is all a hangover from last summer’s doldrums, when inflation peaked at 9.1 percent last June. Consumer prices might be the most obvious way that everyday Americans interact with the economy. Inflation today is still 3.2 percent higher compared to this time last year, which means prices are still above what they were before the pandemic.
A shopper makes their way through a grocery store on July 12, 2023 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The fact that the job market remains strong, with unemployment at historic lows and wages rising, hardly makes an impact when people feel like they’re spending more every time they go to the grocery store and are struggling to pay down debts amid high interest rates. But the truth is, Americans’ view of the economy overall was low when Biden took office during the wobbly beginnings of the COVID-19 recovery, and has never risen above 50 percent.
What do people want from federal policy? They support measures such as taxing the wealthy and corporations more — more than three-quarters of all Americans approve, including 90 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans, according to an Ipsos/Reuters poll. As it happens, that policy is part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, his signature inflation-fighting legislative win, but less than half of Americans say they know about the bill. [abcimageid=102515993] Biden is working to promote the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislative accomplishments as part of “Bidenomics,” but the fact that there’s a gap between what Biden is doing about the economy and how people feel about it leaves plenty of room for Republican attacks. Indeed, DeSantis has promised to roll back Biden’s economic policies. And the polling so far suggests that, even if the economy improves even more in the next year, Biden might not get credit for it.
-Analysis by Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight
Aug 23, 2023, 7:36 PM EDT
Nixon, Gore, Perry and more memorable moments from debates past
A hallmark of the American electoral process, debates are considered a key showcase for candidates seeking to hold the nation's top office.
Memorable moments include Ronald Reagan’s witty response to questions about his age and Kamala Harris’ challenge to Joe Biden on segregation and race, which prompted the viral line: "That little girl was me."
Democratic presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden listens as U.S. Senator Kamala Harris speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on July 31, 2019.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
But not all debate highlights are positive. Richard Nixon’s sweating, Al Gore's relentless sighing and Rick Perry’s "oops" gaffe were considered costly to their campaigns.
"These are the only times we see them side by side," one expert told ABC News. "They provide opportunities for candidates to either help themselves or hurt themselves."
This debate might be going out to a national audience, but the 2024 Republican presidential primary will be decided on a state-by-state basis — and because they’re the first to vote, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada will have an outsized impact on the race.
We’ve been collecting data on how many times each candidate has visited each early state, and there are some revealing trends. For one thing, the candidates seem to think Iowa and New Hampshire are much more important than South Carolina and Nevada. They’ve visited the first two more than 90 times each but South Carolina only 30 times and Nevada only four times. In addition, some candidates seem to be putting all their eggs in either New Hampshire’s or Iowa’s basket. For example, Christie and Hurd are focusing almost exclusively on New Hampshire — perhaps the famously independent Granite State will prove more receptive to their anti-Trump brand. Hutchinson, meanwhile, is focusing on Iowa.
Overall, Ramaswamy and Haley have paid the most visits to early states — though that’s partly because they announced their campaigns earlier than most other candidates.
