Who Won The Third Republican Debate?
We partnered with The Washington Post and Ipsos to poll voters before and after the candidates took the stage.
Republican voters thought former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley turned in the strongest debate performance on Wednesday night, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy’s rubbed many voters the wrong way. But when it comes to whom they might vote for, the debate doesn’t seem to have changed many voters’ minds.
That’s based on the findings of a new 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel late Wednesday and early Thursday, right after the debate. We compared the findings of that poll to the same voters’ responses in a pre-debate poll we conducted Oct. 30-Nov. 7 to get a sense of how the debate might — or might not — have changed the race. Here’s what we found:
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 likely Republican primary voters who watched at least some of the debate, Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were by far the strongest performers, with average performance scores of 3.6 and 3.5 out of 5, respectively. (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.) That probably didn’t come as a surprise to many viewers, though, because voters also had the highest expectations for Haley and DeSantis going into the debate, based on a question we asked previously using the same scale.
On the other end of the spectrum, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie all turned in roughly average performances, according to debate viewers. However, Ramaswamy had above-average expectations going into the debate, so his mediocre performance may be perceived more negatively than, say, Christie’s. In fact, Christie’s average performance score (2.8 out of 5) was higher than his average expectations score (2.6 out of 5), so he actually did better than most viewers thought he would.
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
However, despite their clear feelings about who won and lost the debate, most Republicans aren’t changing their mind about whom they might vote for. When we asked likely primary voters (including both debate watchers and non-watchers) after the debate whom they were considering voting for (respondents could say they were considering multiple candidates), their answers were within 2 percentage points of their pre-debate answers for every candidate. Former President Donald Trump, who skipped the debate, remains in first place with 63 percent of voters open to supporting him, followed by DeSantis at 48 percent and Haley at 38 percent. Potentially interesting, though, is the fact that Haley and Christie were the only two debaters who gained potential support after Wednesday night.
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
In addition, we measured each candidate’s favorable and unfavorable rating among likely Republican primary voters (again, including both debate watchers and non-watchers) both before and after the debate, and these too remained pretty constant. However, there were still some notable (if small) shifts. The candidate whose popularity took the biggest hit from the debate was Ramaswamy: His net favorability rating went from +6 points (34 percent favorable, 28 percent unfavorable) before the debate to -1 point (33 percent favorable, 34 percent unfavorable) after it. The share of Republicans viewing Scott unfavorably also ticked up after the debate, while the share viewing DeSantis favorably went slightly down.
Interestingly, the candidate who gained the most new fans from the debate was Christie. He started from a terrible net favorability rating of -39 points (20 percent favorable, 59 percent unfavorable), but he improved to -31 points (23 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable) after the debate. Much of Christie’s unpopularity within the GOP stems from his opposition to Trump, but he was quieter on that front in Wednesday’s debate.
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.) Once again, among Republicans who responded to both waves of our poll, getting inflation and costs under control and controlling immigration led the way, with 52 percent and 41 percent respectively. Since the previous debate, though, keeping America safe from foreign conflicts or terrorism has spiked in importance. Thirty percent of Republicans now name it as one of their top issues, compared with 17 percent in our survey ahead of the Sept. 27 debate. This is likely a result of the Israel-Hamas war, which broke out after the Oct. 7 surprise terror attack on Israel by Hamas militants. Appropriately, foreign policy was the focus of an extended segment at the debate.
Our post-debate poll also asked debate watchers whether the debate did a good or a bad job covering some of these issues. It found that viewers were generally happy with how the debate covered the topics most important to them. For instance, 38 percent said the debate did an excellent or very good job covering immigration, while only 19 percent said it did a poor or terrible job. And 34 percent said the debate did an excellent or very good job covering the economy, while only 17 percent said it did a poor or terrible job doing so.
Viewers were less happy with how the debate covered other topics, though. For example, only 20 percent said the debate did an excellent or very good job covering crime and public safety, and 28 percent said it did a poor or terrible job. And only 20 percent of viewers said the debate did an excellent or very good job covering wokeness or political correctness, while 34 percent said it did a poor or terrible job covering that topic.
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 Nov. 8, 2023, to track whether and how their answers changed. The first wave of the poll was conducted from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 among a general population sample of adults, with 5,339 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 ±1.5 percentage points.
The second wave of the poll was conducted late on the night of Nov. 8 and early in the morning on Nov. 9 among 2,682 of the likely Republican primary voters who had previously responded to the first wave; it has a margin of error of ±2.1 points. Of those respondents, 731 watched all or part of the debate. The subset of debate watchers carries a margin of error of ±4.1 points.
Click here for a full methodology.
Editing by Tia Yang. Copy editing by Cooper Burton and Alex Kimball. Visual editing by Christopher Groskopf. Additional contributions from Mary Radcliffe. Art by Katrina Stapleton.
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