I’m watching Burgum and Scott tonight. Their task is pretty simple: Get Republican voters to notice them. According to the poll we conducted before the debate with Ipsos and The Washington Post, they’re the two most anonymous candidates on that debate stage tonight (as measured by the share of Republicans who don’t have either a favorable or unfavorable view of them). If they’re going to change that, they need to really get in the middle of some exchanges and emerge from the debate as one of the top storylines.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich

At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from “True” to “Pants on Fire” false.

If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road. First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead. We focus on claims that are particularly interesting, in the news or obviously potentially wrong. Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Pence tonight claims that he and Trump “achieved energy independence” in their first three years of office, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think.

In Pence’s case, yes, the United States did produce more energy than its citizens consumed during the Trump-Pence administration, but that was built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewables. And the U.S. did not produce more gasoline than it consumes (which is maybe what you were thinking about). And if that’s not enough, even though the U.S. didn’t use all the energy it produced, it still imported a substantial amount of energy to serve domestic markets.

So far in this cycle, we’ve published more than 50 fact-checks of the GOP candidates. Our checks tend to follow the polling of the race. We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
—Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact

Hello readers! I’m Jacob Rubashkin (not 1992 VP candidate James Stockdale), and I’m a reporter and analyst for Inside Elections, a small, nonpartisan newsletter that does in-depth coverage of House, Senate, gubernatorial and presidential races. You may have seen our “race ratings,” which we publish regularly to assess each party’s chance of winning every election around the country.

Tonight, I’ll be reporting for duty as a 538 contributor, as I’ve done for many debates, primaries, and general elections over the past two years. I’ll be providing live analysis on the events playing out on stage, and also thinking about how the course of the GOP presidential primary will affect the fight for Congress next year, when Republicans aim to win back full control of Washington, D.C. (The debate is taking place in California’s 26th District, which is Solid Democratic, but right next door is the highly competitive 27th District, where vulnerable GOP Rep. Mike Garcia might not appreciate having to run with Trump at the top of the ticket).

—Analysis by Jacob Rubashkin, 538 Contributor

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

Christie suggested that the government should refrain from regulating AI. Polling shows Republicans agree: when it comes to who should be responsible for providing solutions to AI-related issues, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to turn to companies and brands than to the government. In a July survey from Ipsos, Republicans preferred companies and brands over the government to be most responsible for creating or retaining local jobs by 29 percentage points, ensuring that AI doesn’t discriminate by 8 percentage points and ensuring AI provides accurate results by 14 percentage points. On protecting creators from unfair use of their work and preventing the spread of misinformation by AI, equal numbers of Republicans said that the government and companies should be most responsible.
—Analysis by 538