Haley tried to defuse the flying attacks, including another round of barbs between Christie and Ramaswamy.

"This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman," Haley said.

"If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman," says Haley (quoting former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), chastising both Christie and Ramaswamy while drawing attention to the fact that she's the only woman up on stage tonight.
-Analysis by Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Pence and Ramaswamy engaged in the first fiery back-and-forth of the night, with the former vice president going after the entrepreneur in an unprompted attack.

"You got people on this stage that won't even talk about issues like Social Security and Medicare," Pence said. "Vivek, you recently said, a president can't do everything. Well, I got news for you … the president of the United States has to confront every crisis facing America. I will put our nation back on the path to growth and prosperity and restore fiscal responsibility."

Ramaswamy didn't directly take Pence on in response, saying he'd tap into all of America's energy resources.

Pence didn't let Ramaswamy off the hook, firing back, "Let me explain it to you. I'll go slower this time."

Burgum finally gets a word in, and starts with an easy "break a leg" joke. Notable that he pivots pretty quickly from the economy write large to specifically talk about energy. He's come armed with the statistics you'd expect from the leader of one of the top energy-producing states in the union.

If you’re trying to gauge which Republican primary candidate would perform best against Biden in next year’s general election — their “electability” — their favorability ratings are a helpful signal. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, Biden is viewed favorably by 41.6 percent of U.S. adults and unfavorably by 53.9 percent, for a net rating of -12.3 percentage points. That compares to a net favorability rating for Trump of -16.5 points (39.7 percent favorable and 56.2 percent unfavorable). Given those numbers, a reasonable observer might expect Biden to beat Trump in the popular vote in 2024, all else being equal. (Of course, it never is).

Many of the other candidates — like Ramaswamy and Scott — have higher net favorability than Biden. But that doesn’t mean they’d actually perform better against the incumbent president in a general election. Candidates’ net favorability tends to decline as more people know them. To get a sense of how popular some of the less-known candidates are, we can use a regression model to quantify the relationship between name recognition and net favorability and then estimate what each candidate’s net favorability rating should be based on how many people know them. Then, we can compare the actual number to that benchmark and get a better sense of who is overperforming or underperforming. On this metric, Scott and Ramaswamy score the best of the non-Trump field, with current net ratings that are 5 and 6 percentage points, respectively, higher than we would predict for them. Christie, meanwhile, trails the field with a net favorability rating 15 percentage points lower than his benchmark.

-Analysis by G. Elliott Morris of FiveThirtyEight