Yeah, Jacob — not a lot of voters are going to stay home in a swing state in a presidential election with an abortion ballot measure (maybe) on the ballot.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538

DeSantis is asked about how he'll win over pro-choice voters in states like Arizona and, while he doesn't give an actual strategy, he says he's already done it in Florida, citing his big victory in 2022. But as many have written, Florida's Republican wave last year was just as much if not more a function of Democrats just staying home altogether rather than voting for DeSantis.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Dana Perino is asking about abortion policy. In an August survey conducted by SurveyMonkey for 19th News, only 15 percent of Republicans said that abortion should be illegal in all cases. A majority of Republicans said that abortion should be legal if the patient’s life is endangered (71 percent), in cases of rape or incest (68 percent), if the patient’s health is endangered (55 percent), or if the fetus is not expected to survive (52 percent). Only 19 percent of Republicans said abortion should be legal for women who do not wish to be pregnant.
—Analysis by 538

DeSantis just bragged that the Florida Democratic Party is in ruins and that he turned Florida into a red state. I took a closer look at this question a couple weeks ago, though, and found … not a lot of evidence that DeSantis himself is responsible for the reddening of Florida.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538

The second debate stage will look mostly like the first, as seven of the eight candidates who took part in the initial August debate qualified for tonight’s event. And just like the first debate, front-runner Trump has decided to skip the event, despite having the polls and donors to make it. To qualify, the RNC mandated that candidates have at least 3 percent support in two national polls, or at least 3 percent in one nationwide survey and two polls from separate early states, based on polls conducted since Aug. 1 that met the RNC’s criteria for inclusion. Candidates also had to attract at least 50,000 unique contributors, with at least 200 from 20 different states or territories.

The RNC raised the polling and donor standards for the second debate, which slightly winnowed the list of participants. The new rules raised the level of support candidates needed in qualifying polls from 1 percent to 3 percent, and the number of unique donors from 40,000 to 50,000. Six of the seven qualifying candidates had little trouble meeting these polling and donor thresholds. However, although Burgum had enough donors, he struggled to poll well enough nationally to qualify. It took until the Saturday before the debate for him to get the national poll at 3 percent he needed. Meanwhile, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson came up short of qualification, as Hurd lacked sufficient polls and only got to 50,000 donors on Monday, while Hutchinson didn’t have enough qualifying polls or donors.

—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538