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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Early state check-in: New Hampshire
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
Where are the candidates campaigning?
We at 538 have been tracking how many days each candidate has spent campaigning in each state. And some interesting patterns have emerged:
Some candidates — like Ramaswamy and Haley — have really focused on retail politics, while others — like Trump and Scott — have held relatively few campaign events. (Perhaps their strategy is more reliant on TV ads.)>
Hutchinson, DeSantis and Pence have focused their campaigning on Iowa, whose culturally conservative and religious GOP electorate may be a good fit for their politics. By contrast, Christie and Hurd have focused their efforts on New Hampshire, whose large population of independent voters may be more receptive to their anti-Trump message.
The candidates are largely ignoring Nevada, even though it’s the third state on the primary calendar. Through Tuesday, the 10 major candidates have spent a total of 162 campaign days in Iowa and 124 in New Hampshire, but only four in Nevada!
—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538
Early state check-in: Iowa
Trump maintains a lead of 32 percentage points over his nearest competitor in Iowa, according to the latest polls. Trump and Haley have both improved their polling by about 6 points since the August debate, while DeSantis’s numbers remain virtually unchanged.
According to an early September Emerson College poll, 79 percent of likely caucusgoers who say they plan to vote for Trump also say they are definitely going to vote for him. By contrast, voters who support other candidates say they might change their mind: Seventy-one percent of Scott supporters, 70 percent of Haley supporters, 56 percent of DeSantis supporters and 46 percent of Ramaswamy supporters indicated they could vote for a different candidate.
And in a September survey from Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research/Fox Business, 46 percent of likely Iowa caucusgoers list Trump as their first-choice candidate, but only 7 percent list Trump as their second choice. This may indicate that consolidation in the rest of the Republican field could significantly reduce Trump’s lead in the state, as few voters who aren’t already indicating support for Trump seem interested in voting for him.
—Analysis by 538
California voters explain why they are leaning toward Trump in 2024
—Galen Druke of 538
Final thoughts: More of the same, with little extra grandstanding
We got glimmers of candidates attempting to narrow down the GOP primary field. Haley and Scott sparred over South Carolina politics, Pence criticized DeSantis’ spending in Florida, DeSantis criticized Trump’s stance on abortion, and just about everyone tried to take Ramaswamy down a peg (though that might have been a result of their frustration with him rather than actual political strategy). But what Republicans need in order to wage a credible challenge to Trump’s frontrunner status is to shake up the field, and I don’t know if we saw that tonight. It looked like we might get a little closer to winnowing down the field when moderator Dana Perino asked everyone to write down who they should “vote off the island” — but DeSantis, making a show of being above that sort of petty question, prevented us from getting any answers.
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of 538