Mentions of Ronald Reagan, president of the U.S. from 1981 to 1989, so far tonight: 20.
Mentions of Donald Trump, president of the U.S. from 2017 to 2021 and current candidate for president: 12.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538

Nathaniel, I'd imagine Vivek's actual words spoken puts him even further ahead of the other contenders on stage. He even acknowledged he was "in a hurry" earlier in the debate, perhaps trying to inject a little humility and self-awareness into his image, especially after his unfavorability rating shot up after the first debate.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Ramaswamy differed with some of his opponents on the issue of Ukraine, arguing the United States should limit its support for the country in its fight against Russia.

“The reality is just because ... Putin's an evil dictator does not mean that Ukraine is good. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties,” Ramaswamy said.

That’s accurate. But it needs context.

Ukraine banned 11 pro-Russian parties — the largest of which occupied 44 out of 450 seats in parliament, according to Radio Free Europe. The leader of the party, Viktor Medvedchuk, is aligned with Putin. Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk's daughter, Radio Free Europe reported.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact

Burgum gets a question for the first time in a while — on farmers — and turns it into a long foreign-policy answer. He’s trying to remain relevant but always seems to be late to the party on a topic that has already been talked out. According to The New York Times, he has spoken the least tonight: just five minutes and 49 seconds. By contrast, Ramaswamy has spoken the most: nine minutes, 25 seconds.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538

In anticipation of tonight’s debate, we again partnered with The Washington Post and Ipsos to ask likely Republican primary voters what they think about tonight’s debate participants and the candidate field in general.

The 5,002 likely Republican primary voters we polled using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel expect DeSantis and Ramaswamy to perform best, out of the seven-candidate field. According to a five-point scale that we calculated using respondents’ answers (with 1 being “terrible” and 5 being “excellent”), likely voters expected both DeSantis and Ramaswamy to perform “very good” (3.44 and 3.43 out of 5, respectively). They thought Haley would perform third-best (3.40 out of 5) and Scott fourth (3.20 out of 5). All of this is fairly in line with their pre-debate expectations in August.

When it comes to which candidates respondents are interested in, Haley saw the biggest bump since our poll before last month’s debate — 31 percent are now considering voting for Haley, up from 25 percent. Although she now has the third-most prospective support, she’s still got a long way to go compared to Trump (66 percent) and DeSantis (49 percent). About 1 in 4 likely Republican primary voters are also considering voting for Ramaswamy and Pence.

We’ll be watching to see how the candidates fare tonight, and if debate watchers’ opinions on who they’re considering voting for will change after tonight’s performances.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538