It took 15 minutes for the putative polling front-runner to get a word in, and DeSantis uses it to go after Trump on the debt and not showing up for the debate tonight. He even brought a prop -- a veto pen that he says he'll use to block "bloated spending" bills as president. But if he only gets off a few words every 15 minutes, this will be a long night for him.

—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Christie goes after Republicans and Democrats for adding billions to the D.C., but he also takes a shot at Trump for not showing up to the debate. This is the first mention of the former president who is very likely to defeat all of these Republicans in the GOP primary.

—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538

While Ramaswamy clearly tried to differentiate himself from Scott on the question of unions, Pence glossed over his primary challengers and shifted directly to the general election, calling for repealing the Green New Deal and criticizing Biden.
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of 538

According to a September poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, 74 percent of Republicans said they would blame Biden and the Democrats in Congress if the government were to shut down. Just 5 percent said they would blame Republicans in Congress, and 16 percent said they would blame both equally. Five percent didn’t have an opinion or wouldn’t blame either.
—Analysis by 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