Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley
2024 hopefuls argued over education, spending and border security.
The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, has just come to an end.
The affair was more raucous than the first debate, which took place over a month ago. Candidates interrupted one another much more regularly and several — most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have directly criticized front-runner Donald Trump, who elected not to show up tonight. The two candidates from South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, went after one another for their records on spending, and seemingly everyone who had the chance to take a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did so.
Read below for highlights, excerpts and key moments.
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People are already working
Ramaswamy said the answer to the economy was to put people back to work, but the labor market is unusually strong, with low unemployment and cooling but steady job growth.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538
According to The New York Times, DeSantis has spoken the fourth-most of the seven candidates, behind Ramaswamy, Scott, and Christie. That's not the dominant performance that some of his supporters had hoped for, and it doesn't signal to viewers that he's the clear alternative to the absent Trump
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
Reagan’s being mentioned more than Trump
Mentions of Ronald Reagan, president of the U.S. from 1981 to 1989, so far tonight: 20.
Mentions of Donald Trump, president of the U.S. from 2017 to 2021 and current candidate for president: 12.
—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538
Nathaniel, I'd imagine Vivek's actual words spoken puts him even further ahead of the other contenders on stage. He even acknowledged he was "in a hurry" earlier in the debate, perhaps trying to inject a little humility and self-awareness into his image, especially after his unfavorability rating shot up after the first debate.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
Fact-checking DeSantis’s claim that Florida’s crime rate is at a 50-year low
The data for this claim is incomplete. Crime figures are low in Florida, but DeSantis’ figure comes from a database containing information from law enforcement agencies that represent only around 57 percent of the state’s population, a Sept. 20 NBC News report found.
The patchy data is related to Florida’s transition to incident-based crime reporting, the new federal standard, rather than the summary-based reports it has used since the 1970s. With summary reporting, if one incident resulted in multiple crimes, only the most serious would be reported. In 2021, the federal government stopped accepting this type of data, and now requires states to report each crime.
FBI’s crime reporting database doesn’t support DeSantis’ figure either. Only 48 out of 757 Florida law enforcement agencies participated in the FBI’s data collection in 2021. The numbers appear to be similar for 2022, according to a Marshall Project analysis.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact