Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley
2024 hopefuls argued over education, spending and border security.
The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, has just come to an end.
The affair was more raucous than the first debate, which took place over a month ago. Candidates interrupted one another much more regularly and several — most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have directly criticized front-runner Donald Trump, who elected not to show up tonight. The two candidates from South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, went after one another for their records on spending, and seemingly everyone who had the chance to take a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did so.
Read below for highlights, excerpts and key moments.
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DeSantis tries to cut through interruptions
DeSantis is trying a bit there to be the adult in the room, which was effective for him last debate when he derailed a question about climate change, but isn't as effective this time around.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 Contributor
Ramaswamy raises ending birthright citizenship
Ramaswamy brings up one of his key stump speech issues, ending "birthright" citizenship for people who are born on American soil. It's one of the ideas Trump championed in his campaign and earlier presidency — a bit of showing his hand here as he tacks to be the default Trump replacement in the case that he ends up dropping out of the race.
— Analysis by G. Elliott Morris of 538
Republican primary voters are further to the right on immigration
Republican primary voters are further to the right on many immigration issues than the general electorate. They support building a border wall, increasing border patrols, and defunding sanctuary cities. In 2020, the last presidential election year, 62 percent opposed a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrations. Ending birthright citizenship, as Ramaswamy says he wants to do, is even more extreme. Candidates tonight are trying to woo those voters tonight with their stances on immigration, but they risk boxing themselves into unpopular opinions should they make it to the general election.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538
DeSantis on China
DeSantis gets a question on China and says he wants a totally new approach to that country. He says that he wants to ban the Chinese Communist Party from buying land anywhere in America, and also says he doesn't want them in our universities. It wasn't clear if he was talking about all Chinese students, or just the Confucius Institutes he mentioned right after.
—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
How well do likely Republican voters think candidates will perform?
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