After last month’s debate, we declared Haley as a big debate winner, according to our previous poll with The Washington Post and Ipsos. When likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate were asked whether they’d consider voting for each candidate, Haley jumped from 30 percent before the debate to 47 percent after. Overall, participation in the debate was beneficial for candidates, and absence from the debate was (at least marginally) detrimental.

We’ll be following up with the same group as our pre-debate poll to see how participants performed and what respondents' views on all of the candidates are. Check back in with 538 tomorrow afternoon for our post-debate analysis.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538

DeSantis gets another chance to be the adult in the room by rejecting the premise of that moderator question. He did the same thing in the first debate when the moderators asked candidates to raise their hands if they believed in man-made climate change.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Moderator Dana Perino asked every candidate to write down which challenger they would “vote off the island.” DeSantis refused, prompting Perino to rework her approach, asking for his mathematical approach to winning the nomination — and of course, that’s not going to work with a politician. Christie, however, interjected that he’d be just fine voting Trump off the island.
-- Analysis by Leah Askarinam of 538

DeSantis claimed that his 1.5 million-vote victory was the largest in a Florida gubernatorial election in state history. Now, his nearly-20 percentage point margin of victory was quite large in what has historically been a swing state. But it's quite misleading to use the raw vote margin since population has changed quite a bit over time! This is especially true in a state like Florida, which has grown by leaps and bounds. For instance, a candidate would've had a tougher time winning by 1.5 million votes in 1990, when the state had a population of about 13 million, than in 2022, when the state had a population of about 22 million.

— Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538

Several of the Republicans on stage touted their prioritization of border security should they win the presidency.

“What I’ll do on day one is sign an executive order to send the National Guard to partner with Customs and Border Patrol to make sure that we stop the flow of fentanyl over the border,” Christie said first. He expanded his answer to include his plans to fill the “6 million vacant jobs” in the country with legal immigrants.

“This border is going to be a day one issue for me as president,” DeSantis said, also noting that he’d administer the remain in Mexico policy, which requires migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their US immigration court date.

“We're going to declare a national emergency. Yes, we'll build the wall. We’ll do remain in Mexico,” DeSantis said.

Pence spoke about his role in negotiating the remain in Mexico policy of the Trump administration.

“I negotiated the remain in Mexico policy with the Mexican government. We used economic power to bring the Mexican government to the table. We build hundreds of miles of border wall and despite what's said here today, we reduced illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90%. And as President of the United States, I can do it again,” he said. “I'm going to be ready on day one to get Congress to step up, secure the southern border of the United States.”

Haley cosigned on the Remain in Mexico Policy.

“Let's go back to Remain in Mexico policy,” she said. “Instead of catch and release. Let's go to catch and deport.”
Ramaswamy said that he was supportive of most of his opponents’ border positions, but that he’d go a step further: he’d end birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants.

“The Republicans on the stage are on the right side of this issue, militarize the southern border, stop funding sanctuary cities and end foreign aid to Mexico and Central America to end the incentives to come across,” Ramaswamy said.

--ABC News' Isabella Murray