Who Won The First Republican Debate?
We partnered with Ipsos and The Washington Post to poll voters before and after the candidates took the stage.
The first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate is in the books, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy seem to have made the best impressions.
We know that thanks to fresh data from a FiveThirtyEight/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel in the hours immediately following the debate. We surveyed the same group of likely Republican primary voters before and after the debate, allowing us to see how much it may have shifted public opinion. All pre- and post-debate numbers below are limited to respondents who watched some or all of the debate.
The over- (and under-) performers
How well likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate expected each candidate to do before the debate versus how well they thought each candidate actually did
We asked respondents how they expected each candidate to do, and how well they actually did, on a five-point scale from “excellent” to “terrible” and converted each answer to a number on a 1-to-5 scale. “Excellent” was equal to 5, “very good” was equal to 4, “about average” was equal to 3, “poor” was equal to 2 and “terrible” was equal to 1. Scores were then averaged to create overall scores for each candidate. Respondents who answered “don’t know” to the expectations or performance questions were excluded.
Before the debate, our poll asked respondents to grade how they expected each candidate to perform on a five-point scale from “excellent” to “terrible.” Then, after the debate, we asked debate watchers to use the same scale to grade how they thought the candidates actually did.
Each candidate largely performed as well as Republican voters were expecting them to, according to their average performance and expectations scores.2Average scores were calculated by assigning a 1-to-5 score to each answer to the expectations and performance questions, where “excellent” was equal to 5, “very good” was equal to 4, “about average” was equal to 3, “poor” was equal to 2 and “terrible” was equal to 1. Scores were then averaged to create overall scores for each candidate. Respondents who answered “don’t know” to the expectations or performance questions were excluded. DeSantis received the highest average grade for his performance, followed closely by Haley and Ramaswamy. This was more impressive for Haley, though, considering that expectations were just slightly above average for her going into the debate. By contrast, Ramaswamy had the highest expectations of any debater going into Wednesday night. At the other end of the spectrum, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson both had the lowest expectations going into the debate and got the lowest grade for his actual performance.
Who gained (and lost) support
Share of likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate who are considering voting for each candidate after the debate compared with before it
Respondents could pick multiple candidates.
But did those good and bad performances actually sway any voters? We also asked debate watchers after the debate which candidates they were considering voting for and compared that to their answers before the debate. Haley saw the biggest change in her numbers — 30 percent of debate watchers were considering her before the debate, and 47 percent are considering her after it. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (+8 percentage points), Ramaswamy (+5 points) and DeSantis (+4 points) saw more modest increases. Interestingly, only one candidate saw a meaningful decrease in the number of debate watchers considering voting for him: former President Donald Trump, who chose not to attend the debate. This decrease came despite the fact that most debaters chose not to attack Trump in his absence, opting instead to criticize one another.
The popularity contest
Candidates' favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate
Unfavorable
Favorable
Before debate
No opinion/Never heard of
After debate
The debate also saw many debate watchers form new opinions of the candidates — some for the better, some for the worse. For example, Haley saw a 14-point increase in her favorable rating with virtually no change to her unfavorable rating, while DeSantis increased his net favorability rating from +41 points to +48 points. Ramaswamy and Hutchinson also saw their favorable ratings rise by double digits after the debate — but their unfavorable ratings rose even more, so they are now less popular on net after the debate than they were before it. Burgum also greatly raised his profile with the debate, though it ended up being a wash: His net favorability rating after the debate (+4 points) is about the same as it was before the debate (+2 points).
Which issues matter most?
Share of likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate who said before the debate that each issue was among the most important to determining their primary vote
The top {{ top_n }} issues are shown. Other issues are {{ other_issues }}. Respondents could select up to three issues from a list of 16, with additional options for “something else” and “don’t know.”
Finally, before the debate, we asked likely Republican primary voters what issues were most important in determining their primary vote. (Respondents were allowed to select up to three issues from a list of 16.) The most common response among debate watchers was, appropriately, the one that came up first in the debate: getting inflation or costs under control. Controlling immigration came in second place with 44 percent. Ability to beat President Biden, fighting liberalism and the woke agenda and cutting government spending were all bunched up together between 27 and 29 percent. Interestingly, improving election security and limiting abortion — which elicited some of the biggest disagreements between the candidates on Wednesday night — were among the least important issues, with only 10 percent and 6 percent of Republicans, respectively, choosing them as one of their top priorities.
All the data presented here comes from polling done by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight and The Washington Post using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel that is recruited to be representative of the U.S. population. The same group of respondents was interviewed before and after the Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23, 2023, to track whether and how their answers changed. Numbers on this page exclude respondents who skipped each question. The first wave of the poll was conducted from Aug. 15 through Aug. 22 among a general population sample of adults, with 4,968 respondents who said they were likely to vote in their state’s Republican primary or caucus. For the likely Republican primary voter subset of respondents, the first wave of the poll has a margin of error of ±1.6 percentage points.
The second wave of the poll was conducted late on the night of Aug. 23 and early in the morning on Aug. 24 among 2,219 of the likely Republican primary voters who had previously responded to the first wave. Of those respondents, 775 watched all or part of the debate. The subset of debate watchers carries a margin of error of ±4.0 points.
Click here for a full methodology.
Editing by Maya Sweedler and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux. Copy editing by Cooper Burton. Visual editing by Christopher Groskopf. Additional contributions from Mary Radcliffe. Art by Katrina Stapleton.
Comments