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

This was a weird debate, full of interruptions and crosstalk. I'm skeptical anyone actually "broke through" in some huge, game-changing way, and neither of the candidates I closely monitored — Haley or Christie — looked likely to suddenly gain 10 points in the polls next week.

But I did think Haley mostly had a strong night, building on her well-received showing in the first debate. She made the case for a more restrictive approach to border security, dinged Biden for his handling of the economy and immigration, and argued that TikTok is a huge danger to the country. That said, I do wonder if she might've rubbed some viewers the wrong way by saying she felt dumber after listening to Ramaswamy, and with her interruption-filled argument with Scott late in the debate. I say that because of how women are sometimes perceived in those sorts of situations — female candidates in the past have been tagged with misogynistic descriptors like "shrill," for instance. I look forward to seeing the post-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll to get a better read on how she came across.

As for Christie, he continued to be the one person in the room unafraid of attacking Trump, doing it on a good share of his answers. On the one hand, he's got nothing to lose as the GOP candidate with the worst favorability rating among Republican voters. On the other hand, his dings did occasionally free up opportunities for other candidates to make small digs at Trump without going after the former president as aggressively as Christie did. (For instance, DeSantis took a shot at Trump for adding significantly to the national debt after Christie brought it up.) Christie probably knows that he's got no chance of winning the GOP nomination, but he may also be thinking strategically about how he can help his party avoid renominating Trump. Still, it's going to take some pretty drastic changes in the race for that outcome — Trump winning the GOP primary — to not come to pass.

—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538