Where things stand after the debate
It's been a busy week in the political world. The debate in Milwaukee went off on Wednesday night without the Republican primary frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.
Instead, the former president aired an interview with former FOX News host Tucker Carlson, which racked up hundreds of millions of views on X, formerly known as Twitter, but was only seen by a fraction of Republican primary voters. Instead, the big news event for Trump was his arrest in Georgia and his now-infamous mug shot.
With all that history—no other president has a mug shot, let alone one taken during the heat of a primary cycle—did the other candidates break through with voters on Wednesday?
We look at the numbers behind the first Republican primary debate in the five charts below.
- Speaking times. Across the two-hour event, four candidates spoke for more than 10 minutes. Did these candidates push their agenda and candidacy forward in the little time they spoke, or did they hurt their case with Republican primary voters? Let’s see.
- The standouts. For Republican primary voters who watched the debate, a majority said DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Haley did an excellent or very good job on the debate stage. All the other candidates were less inspiring. Can they capitalize on this momentum? We will see.
- Haley helped herself. Haley seemed to help herself the most at the debate. Her favorability and awareness grew the most among Republican primary voters who watched the debate. Awareness grew for many of the other middling candidates—but not as many people rated them as favorably following the debate. That's not how you want to introduce yourself to voters.
- DeSantis vs. Trump. DeSantis and Trump are still the top two candidates Republican debate watchers are considering voting for in the Republican primary. However, don’t forget that debate watchers aren’t representative of all Republican primary voters. Many didn’t tune into the debate at all.
- Trump’s counterprogramming. Seven percent of Republican primary voters who didn’t watch the debate said they watched Tucker Carlson’s interview of Donald Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter. Four times more people said they watched something else, like another TV show or movie. But the Trump-Carlson interview racked up over 250 million views, at least according to X’s metrics. Will Trump show up at the next debate after missing the fanfare and the spotlight of a televised debate? We will see.
Most of the GOP candidates came into Wednesday night in Milwaukee without much support. With the exception of Trump and DeSantis, all other candidates were not polling above 10%--a tough position to be in. Who overcame this? It seems like DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Haley all did well in the eyes of Republican primary voters who watched the debate.
However, this performance is a bit of a mirage, given the candidates on stage on Wednesday were not facing off with the current frontrunner, former president, and party leader. There's still an open question of how these candidates can break through all the noise around Trump outside of the debate stage.
