Haley spars with Republican rivals at 3rd primary debate as Trump still looms
The night heavily focused on international affairs.
The third Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary was held Wednesday night in Miami.
Five candidates took the stage: former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Missing -- again -- was front-runner Donald Trump, who instead hosted a rally not far away, in Hialeah, Florida.
ABC News and the analysts at 538 live-blogged every major moment and highlight from the debate. PolitiFact made real-time fact checks of key statements.
Key moments:
The facts about the 2024 GOP hopefuls
At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from True to Pants on Fire false for the most ridiculous claims.
If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road. First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead. But seriously, we focus on claims that are particularly interesting, or in the news, or obviously potentially wrong.
Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Haley claims that DeSantis is against fracking, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think. DeSantis, while running for governor in 2018, did promise to ban fracking and prevent oil drilling off Florida's coast.
But DeSantis said that what applies in Florida doesn’t necessarily need to apply everywhere. "And so when we're doing that, that is not saying that I think that should apply to Louisiana or Texas and all that. So, that will continue. And we want them to be able to do it, and we also want them to be able to use hydraulic fracturing," DeSantis has said.
We've fact-checked the candidates on stage in Miami 41 times this year. We’ve fact-checked DeSantis 16 times, Haley and Ramaswamy each eight times, Scott six times and Christie three times.
We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact
DeSantis returns home, but he badly trails Trump both nationally and in Florida
The candidates have gathered in Miami for the third debate and DeSantis may hope that his home state's March 19 primary will give him a boost as the GOP nomination race progresses. However, he's got a lot of work to do for that to happen.
DeSantis is in a distant second in national primary polls and also holds that position in surveys of the Iowa caucuses, which will kick things off on Jan. 15. However, even in his home state, DeSantis is badly behind Trump:
In 538's primary average, Trump currently leads DeSantis in the Sunshine State by about 32% -- 53-21%.
Now, Trump's home state is also Florida, with him home at Mar-a-Lago, although he's a longtime New Yorker. And a lot will happen before Florida votes in mid-March. But we saw in 2016 that your home state only matters so much if your campaign isn't doing well. Back then, Trump defeated Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 46-27% in the Florida primary, which finished Rubio in that race.
-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on who he might endorse
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez -- a former 2024 Republican presidential candidate -- said on ABC News Live on Wednesday that he would consider endorsing either Haley or Trump in the presidential primary but "it remains to be seen when I'll do it."
On Haley, Suarez told ABC News Live anchor Kayna Whitworth that she's someone who "called me a rock-star mayor. She went on my podcast. I have a relationship with her."
Suarez said he also has had "very good conversations with the former president," saying Trump called him "right away" when he suspended his primary campaign in August and has been in touch since.
-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim, Kayna Whitworth and Rick Klein
Meet your debate fact-checker
Your humble fact-checker is reporting for duty. I’m Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of PolitiFact. We’re excited to help sort out fact from fiction during Wednesday's debate.
I’m not omniscient -- in case you’re wondering. PolitiFact has a team of more than 30 fact-checkers that has been scrutinizing the candidates’ remarks for months. And wouldn’t you know it, candidates tend to repeat themselves on debate night.
I’ll be popping in when we see something that warrants more context or a correction.
-Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact
Fact-checking Scott’s claim that 3 out of 4 Americans support 15-week abortion ban.
“Three out of four Americans agree with a 15-week limit,” Scott said.
Survey data varies on this question. A June 2023 poll sponsored by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group, and conducted by the Tarrance Group, found that 77% of respondents said abortions should be prohibited at conception, after six weeks or after 15 weeks.
But this poll was sponsored by a group with a position on the issue, and both questions told respondents that fetuses can feel pain at 15 weeks -- an assertion that is not the universal consensus among medical experts.
Independent polls found a range of results on the question of an abortion ban after 15 weeks. A July 2022 survey from Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll found that 23% of respondents said their state should ban abortion after 15 weeks, 12% said it should be banned at six weeks and 37% said it should be allowed only in cases of rape and incest. Collectively, that’s 72% who supported a ban at 15 weeks or less.
In two subsequent polls, the support for abortion at 15 weeks or less was not as strong. A September 2022 Economist/YouGov poll found that 39% of respondents supported a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, and 46% opposed it. And a June 2023 Associated Press-NORC poll found that for abortion up to 15 weeks, 51% of respondents said they would allow it, while 45% said they would ban it.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact