Born in 1985 and only 38, Ramaswamy may be the only candidate on stage who was too young to remember the Cold War. The USSR dissolved when he was 6.
-Analysis by Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight

The debate over Ukraine is a window into the intraparty battle between its previously more dominant neoconservative wing that lost credibility during and after the George W. Bush years and the comparably isolationist wing that's gained ground with Trump's time in office. Ramaswamy, as an avatar for the New Right, specifically name-checked the Iraq War, saying the Ukraine conflict could lead to American intervention. By comparison, Pence and Haley, more traditional conservatives who have foreign policy experience from their time as vice president and U.N. ambassador, respectively, were especially vocal in defending U.S. support for Ukraine.-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight

Scott, DeSantis, Christie, Haley and Burgum (plus, of course, Pence) all said tonight that Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6 by refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 election (which he didn’t have the legal ability to do anyway). That’s a notable break from one of the highest-profile tenets of Trumpism — that he was the rightful winner in 2020. In fact, in 2022, we found that only 31 percent of Republican candidates for Senate, House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state had accepted the legitimacy of Biden’s election. Tonight, a majority of the GOP presidential candidates have done so.
-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight

Bret Baier just asked about increasing funding to Ukraine. According to a July poll by SSRS/CNN, 71 percent of Republicans say that the U.S. Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine, while 28 percent say that it should. However, there is more support among Republicans for some other U.S. actions in Ukraine, such as 56 percent who support assisting Ukraine in intelligence gathering, 48 percent who support military training for Ukranians, and 30 percent who support supplying the Ukrainian military with weapons.
-Analysis by FiveThirtyEight

Recent election cycles have shown how debates can substantially alter a candidate’s trajectory. The debates won’t always do this, of course, and early primary polls remain relatively predictive of who will end up winning a party’s nomination. However, a candidate can earn a real polling bounce from a debate — or fall into a valley.

Primary polls are inherently more volatile than general election polls. In a general election, most voters already lean toward one party, so only a small part of the electorate is likely to shift its views over the course of a campaign. But in a primary, voters in one party may be open to multiple candidates because most contenders will share similar views on a number of issues. As a result, exposure to an unfamiliar candidate could prompt voters to begin considering that contender, while a strong or weak performance by a candidate they do know could make them look elsewhere.

For example, early in the 2012 cycle, Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeared to be now-Sen. Mitt Romney’s most serious opponent for the Republican nomination. But in a September 2011 debate, Perry defended a Texas policy that gave undocumented immigrants access to in-state college tuition. The backlash from the GOP base came swiftly, as Perry fell out of contention in the polls, well before a later debate in which he — oops — forgot the name of the third of three federal agencies that he aimed to dismantle as president. Four years later, former tech executive Carly Fiorina had very little support early in the 2016 Republican race, but in August 2015 she stood out in an “undercard” debate. Her polling numbers improved and she made the main stage in subsequent debates, giving her a platform that eventually led Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to make her his vice presidential pick in a last-ditch attempt to rally support against Trump in the 2016 primary.

-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight