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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Fact-checking Haley’s claim that ‘Congress has only delivered a budget on time four times’

This is accurate. From our colleagues at the Pew Research Center:

“In the nearly five decades that the current system for budgeting and spending tax dollars has been in place, Congress has passed all its required appropriations measures on time only four times: fiscal 1977 (the first full fiscal year under the current system), 1989, 1995 and 1997. And even those last three times, Congress was late in passing the budget blueprint that, in theory at least, precedes the actual spending bills.”
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact


In an August poll by YouGov/The Economist, Republicans were particularly likely to be wary of the U.S. relationship with China. Forty-three percent of Republicans said China poses an immediate and serious economic threat to the U.S., while only 16 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of independents agreed. When it comes to a military threat, 33 percent of Republicans said China poses an immediate and serious threat, compared with 13 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents.
—Analysis by 538


Likely Republican voters are pretty split on "sending U.S. military forces to Mexico to fight drug cartels," according to our pre-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. 44 percent support the proposed policy, compared with 46 percent who oppose.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538


Interruptions early

Some early moments in this debate have involved significant cross-talk and interruptions. Burgum's main two comments so far both came via him jumping in to speak without having been asked a question, which is something a low-polling candidate on the periphery of the stage (and race) might as well do with little to lose. Unlike in the first debate, there hasn't been as much of a push by the moderators to give a short rebuttal opportunity to candidates who were mentioned by another candidate, although multiple candidates have asked for that already.

—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538


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