Nikki Haley is going in on Tim Scott's tenure in D.C., asking him "Where have you been? Where have you been, Tim? We've waited 12 years!" without mentioning that she was the one who sent him to the Senate in the first place!
—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

DeSantis misleads on his position. DeSantis said Haley wasn't telling the truth about the Florida governor's actions on fracking. But it's DeSantis who is the one who needs to do more explaining.

Even before he entered office, DeSantis promised to urge Florida's legislature to ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, statewide.

"With Florida's geological makeup of limestone and shallow water sources, fracking presents a danger to our state that is not acceptable," the governor's campaign website read, adding that fighting fracking was a day one action.

Almost all of the action DeSantis took on fracking occurred shortly after he became governor. Just two days into his term, DeSantis issued an executive order with several water policy reforms and a line directing the Department of Environmental Protection to push to end all fracking in Florida.

The order instructed the department to "take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all off-shore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida." Fracking injects water, chemicals and sand at ultrahigh pressure to force open layers of rock and unearth the oil (or sometimes natural gas) that's trapped inside.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact

Americans of both parties don’t expect the national deficit to shrink, according to a June poll from the Pew Research Center. Seventy percent of respondents said they expected the annual deficit to grow in the next five years, including 80 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats. Just 11 percent of respondents said they thought the deficit would be smaller in five years, including 9 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of Democrats.
—Analysis by 538

A couple times tonight, Pence has made the case for a conservative, small-government focused GOP. But as evidenced by the crickets on his initial joke at the start of the debate, there just doesn't seem to be much appetite for him in the Trumpified Republican Party. This isn't a surprise really, given he started the campaign already a villain to many Republicans because Trump had blamed him for his defeat because Pence didn't try to block certification of Biden's victory. But Pence finds himself on the edge of the stage tonight because of his low polling level, and there has really been no good polling news for him recently. His horserace numbers are flat or going down and his favorability numbers among Republicans have worsened, with only Christie having more negative ratings. When might Pence actually leave the race? No idea. But in a field full of candidates who are struggling to have a path to winning, Pence is among those with the least signs of hope.

— Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538

Trump maintains a lead of 33 percentage points over Haley, his nearest competitor in New Hampshire, according to the most recent polls. Haley appears to have benefitted the most from the first debate in the state, gaining 8 points compared to her average result on Aug. 23. No other candidate’s average has moved by more than 3 points, either up or down.

According to a September survey from the University of New Hampshire/CNN, only 36 percent of likely New Hampshire primary voters have definitely decided who they plan to vote for. Thirty-eight percent said they are leaning toward someone, and 24 percent said they are still trying to decide. Trump’s voters, however, were much more firm on their choice: Sixty-nine percent said they have definitely decided, compared with 31 percent for Ramaswamy and less than 20 percent for the other candidates.

When it comes to policy, New Hampshire Republican primary voters seem particularly concerned about economic issues, according to a September survey by NMB Research for the Competitiveness Coalition and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. Given a list of issues that have been raised in the primary, 32 percent said the most important issue to them would be reducing federal budget deficits by cutting spending; 21 percent said it would be spending less on green energy by repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act; and 18 percent said it would be keeping taxes low. The only other issue to reach double-digit support was deploying the U.S. military to the Mexican border to stop illegal drugs from entering the country, which was named as most important by 19 percent of voters.

—Analysis by 538