DeSantis is asked about the Florida education guidelines on teaching slavery. He immediately calls it a hoax and attacks Vice President Kamala Harris (America's first Black vice president), which has been his campaign's strategy on this issue since it first broke. The moderators are quick to tee up a discussion between DeSantis and Scott, though, since the South Carolina senator was among the most outspoken Republicans against the DeSantis plan.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Moderators questioned Haley on "school choice." Seven Republican states, including Florida, passed "universal school choice" this year, which mostly means vouchers for private schools that are available to nearly all students, without income limits. Public school supporters have said these vouchers are a backdoor way of defunding public schools. In most states, states take the per-pupil allocation of tax dollars and give the money directly to parents instead, allowing them to pay for private, religious, or homeschooling courses. In many states the vouchers could go to parents who could otherwise pay for private school, and aren't enough to pay for full tuition for parents who couldn't afford it. The public is divided on these policies, but trust in public schools and public education has been declining, especially among Republicans.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538

Asked about the challenges of high health care costs for Americans, Haley argued that the system needs a major overhaul, from the insurance companies to hospitals, with improved transparency for patients so they have more options and better knowledge of the costs they'll face. Still, this issue isn't as high on Republicans' list of key issues. In a recent Economist/YouGov survey, 58 percent of Republicans said "heath care" was a very important issue. That sounds high, but 81 percent said the same of jobs and the economy, 81 percent of national security and 77 percent of immigration. It's not the 2010 tea party era anymore, or even 2017, when the GOP failed to get rid of Obamacare while in full control of the government.

— Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538

In polling for EdChoice conducted by Morning Consult in August, 46 percent of Republicans strongly or somewhat support school vouchers, while 11 percent strongly or somewhat oppose vouchers, 27 percent say they have never heard of them, and 16 percent don’t know. After being provided a definition, support for vouchers among Republicans increased to 70 percent, and opposition increased to 19 percent.
—Analysis by 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