I was watching DeSantis tonight, and overall I think he did well. Despite perhaps underestimating the strength of his mic (he came across several times like he was yelling), DeSantis came across as confident and didn’t have any of the awkward moments that have gotten him bad attention on the campaign trail. In terms of substance, he turned the conversation toward issue areas that play to his strengths, like COVID-19, wokeness in education and natural disaster leadership.

That said, according to our FiveThirtyEight/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, Republicans already had pretty high expectations for DeSantis in this debate, so maybe his good performance won’t change their priors. (We’ll have to wait for the second wave of our poll to know for sure!) Really what I’m watching for after this debate is what happens to Ramaswamy. Like I wrote earlier, I think he’s the main story of this debate, but I don’t think I have a good handle on whether his performance will be received well or poorly.

-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight

I think Geoffrey has this exactly right: It seemed a little like the candidates were playing pretend tonight by ignoring Trump. But they’re in a tough position, politically. Someone needs to go after Trump in order to open up space for another potential nominee, but going after Trump is also extremely unattractive to GOP voters. That combination keeps Trump in a strong position as the front-runner.

At this point, the question isn’t who will be the alternative to Trump, but whether Republicans will produce an alternative nominee to Trump at all. DeSantis needed to prove tonight that he could live up to the initial hype around him, that he was Republicans’ clear alternative to nominating Trump. But there didn’t seem to be a breakout moment for him. A handful of others — like Haley and Pence — had some strong moments, but we’ll have to wait for polling to see whether those actually resonated with voters. Otherwise, it’s more of the same – which is good news for Trump.

-Analysis by Leah Askarinam of FiveThirtyEight

It's not too surprising to me that Trump didn't come up much tonight except when explicitly pushed by the moderators. A lot of Republicans -- certainly GOP officeholders -- really don't like talking about Trump and never have. Tonight they were given the opportunity to pretend like Trump isn't in the race or the defining story of the election, and of course they took advantage of it. I bet it felt like a relief, even if it wasn't really moored in reality.
-Analysis by Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

For the less-known candidates, debates are a crucial task to introduce themselves (in a positive light!) to the American people. The Google results posted here indicate that Ramaswamy made a big splash today (though I'm not sure how positive the reception will be). He and Scott currently have the strongest net favorable numbers among the GOP candidates. I don't think we heard enough from the latter candidate for his numbers to meaningfully change.

-Analysis by G Elliott Morris of FiveThirtyEight

Before tonight’s debate kicks off, FiveThirtyEight, The Washington Post and Ipsos partnered to ask Republican voters about how they might vote in the upcoming Republican presidential primaries. Specifically, we asked 4,968 likely Republican voters which issues are most important to them when deciding which candidate to vote for in the primaries, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel.

We offered respondents a list of 16 issues and allowed them to select up to three. Of the topics that we asked about, voters were most concerned about “getting inflation or increasing costs under control” (53 percent of respondents selected this issue), something Republican voters have been concerned about since at least the 2022 midterms, according to a previous FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll. Other issues that were top of mind for voters were “controlling immigration” (36 percent), “someone fighting against liberalism and the woke agenda” (25 percent) and “ability to beat Joe Biden” (25 percent).

If tonight’s debate touches upon those top issues, voters might get some clarity on who they are considering voting for when primary season comes around.

-Analysis by Holly Fuong of FiveThirtyEight