Who Won The Fourth Republican Debate?
We partnered with The Washington Post and Ipsos to poll voters before and after the candidates took the stage.
The fourth Republican presidential primary debate was marked by tense, personal exchanges between individual candidates — and it looks like viewers very much took sides. According to new polling data, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley put up the strongest performances, while viewers did not respond well to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. But despite those strong reactions, the debate doesn’t appear to have changed the candidates’ standings in the GOP primary.
As we did for the previous three debates, 538, The Washington Post and Ipsos conducted polls both before and after the debate using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel to see what likely Republican primary voters thought of the debate and whether it changed their minds on any of the candidates. Here are the results:
The over- (and under-) performers
How well likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate expected each candidate to perform before the debate versus how well they thought each candidate actually performed
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.
According to our poll, likely Republican primary voters who watched at least some of the debate gave DeSantis and Haley the highest marks for their performances. We asked debate watchers to grade each candidate’s performance on a five-point scale from “excellent” to “terrible” and then calculated an average score for each candidate;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 got a 3.4 out of 5, while Haley got a 3.3 out of 5. The two of them also had the highest expectations before the debate, based on a question we asked using the same scale. But while DeSantis largely met expectations (his average expectations score was also a 3.4 out of 5), Haley fell a bit short of them (she had an expectations score of 3.6 out of 5).
On the other end of the spectrum, debate watchers gave both Christie (2.9 out of 5) and Ramaswamy (2.8 out of 5) below-average scores for their performance. But while Christie slightly outpaced his pre-debate expectations (which were 2.8 out of 5), Ramaswamy significantly underperformed them (his expectations score was 3.1 out of 5). He was very aggressive on stage, to the point of insulting other candidates — he maligned Haley’s intelligence and told Christie to “enjoy a nice meal and get the hell out of this race” — and viewers didn’t seem to like that.
Who gained and lost support
Share of likely Republican primary voters who are considering voting for each candidate after the debate compared with before it
But when it comes to the million-dollar question — whether the debate actually helped anyone in the polls — it actually seems like Christie was the winner. When we asked poll respondents (including both debate watchers and non-watchers) whom they were considering voting for (respondents could choose multiple candidates for this question), Christie was the only candidate who had more potential support after the debate (18 percent) than before it (15 percent). Despite that, though, Christie is still mired toward the bottom of the pack, with the least potential support out of the candidates who made the stage.
Ultimately, the debate doesn’t seem to have changed the overall trajectory of the race. In our post-debate poll, former President Donald Trump (who once again skipped the debate) still had the most potential support at 64 percent, and DeSantis and Haley were still his main competition — although, for the first time in four debates, neither made gains in the race for second place. Despite their above-average performances, slightly fewer Republicans said they were considering voting for DeSantis and Haley after the debate.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the debate doesn’t seem to have mattered much in the grand scheme of things — 72 percent of likely Republican primary voters in our survey didn’t even watch it.
The popularity contest
Candidates' favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely Republican primary voters before and after the debate
Unfavorable
Favorable
Before debate
No opinion/Never heard of
After debate
Likewise, the candidates’ favorable and unfavorable ratings (again, among both debate watchers and non-watchers) didn’t change much from before the debate. The biggest change was in perceptions of Ramaswamy — his net favorability rating among Republicans went from +3 percentage points before the debate to -6 points after it. And despite generally getting bad marks for his performance, Christie was the only candidate who saw an increase in his net popularity — albeit from -32 points to just -27 points.
Which issues matter most?
Share of likely Republican primary voters 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 20, with additional options for “something else” and “don’t know.” Only those who responded to both pre- and post-debate waves of our survey are included.
Finally, before the debate, we also asked likely Republican primary voters what issues would be most important in determining their primary vote. (Respondents were allowed to select up to three issues from a list of 20.) Just like before the last three debates, their top issues were getting inflation or costs under control (52 percent) and controlling immigration (41 percent). But debate watchers seemed much happier with how the debate handled the latter than the former. Thirty-eight percent of viewers said the debate did an excellent or very good job covering immigration, while only 16 percent thought it did a poor or terrible job doing so. But on building the economy, about the same share said the debate did an excellent or very good job (25 percent) as said it did a poor or terrible job (23 percent).
All the data presented here comes from polling done by Ipsos for 538 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 Dec. 6, 2023, to track whether and how their answers changed. The first wave of the poll was conducted from Nov. 28 to Dec. 5 among a general population sample of adults, with 5,175 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 ±1.54 percentage points.
The second wave of the poll was conducted late on the night of Dec. 6 and early in the morning on Dec. 7 among 2,608 of the likely Republican primary voters who had previously responded to the first wave; it has a margin of error of ±2.2 points. Of those respondents, 763 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 Tia Yang. Copy editing by Cooper Burton. Visual editing by Christopher Groskopf. Additional contributions from Mary Radcliffe. Art by Katrina Stapleton.
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