Live Coverage Of The First Republican Debate

Bobby Jindal was just asked about his unpopularity at home. Most eventual nominees are leading in their home state primaries at this point. Jindal is not. One poll over the last year had him at only 12 percent in a Republican primary.

Fiorina just said that at this point Ronald Reagan “couldn’t win.” As it turns out, Reagan was leading in pretty much all the primary polls at this point in 1980. He also had most of the endorsements. He was, in other words, a favorite for the nomination.

There are more people in our FiveThirtyEight debate watch room than in the audience for this debate.

https://twitter.com/TyndallAndrew/status/629386108007157760 A: It depends. Does Trump run in the general, as a third party candidate? If so, I suggest you take a look at my piece judging Trump’s effect on Republicans. It’s not good for them, if the current polling is to believed. If you’re wondering how Trump merely running in the primary affects the general election, I’d say it’s rather minimal. Elections, especially in this day and age, are less about the candidates running and more about stuff like the state of the economy and the president’s approval rating. That’s not to say that Trump can’t have an impact. If he forces the candidates to run more to the right, it could hurt the eventual nominee. Chances are though that Trump will end up like someone like Herman Cain: loud and eventually forgotten.

One economic talking point worth watching for tonight: inequality. Inequality, of course, is a theme most associated with Democrats — Hillary Clinton talked about it a lot in her big economic policy speech a few weeks back, and it’s pretty much the driving force behind Bernie Sanders’s campaign. But inequality could actually prove to be a tricky issue for Democrats because they’ve held the White House for the past six and a half years — a period that’s been great for the famed “1 percent” and, at least by some measures, pretty lousy for everyone else. Republicans aren’t likely to embrace the “99 percent” rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but don’t be surprised if they talk a lot about the weak income growth experienced by the middle class under President Obama’s watch.

Of the 17 GOP candidates who’ll be on stage in tonight’s debates, nine are current or former governors. That means we’ll likely be hearing a lot about how their states performed economically when they were in office. That’s especially true of Jeb Bush and Rick Perry, who have made their economic records a big piece of their campaigns. It’s worth remembering, though, that governors have very little direct control over their states’ economies. And the things that they can do — upgrade infrastructure, improve schools, reform tax and regulatory structures — generally take years or even decades to play out. It doesn’t make much sense to judge governors based on how their economies performed during their years in office. (The same, by the way, can be said of presidents, which is why Bush’s pledge to produce 4 percent annual economic growth has been met with skepticism by most economists.) That doesn’t mean we should ignore governors’ economic records entirely. Perry, for example, doesn’t deserve much credit for the oil boom that boosted Texas’s economy on his watch. But it’s fair to judge him on what he did with that good fortune. Did he improve the state’s infrastructure? Add to a rainy-day fund to help the economy weather more difficult times? Lower taxes? Those decisions could have important long-term consequences, but they aren’t likely to show up in the month-to-month economic data.

Q: Newt Gingrich thinks the 5 o’clock debate might be better for candidates as there are fewer of them and they will better able to get their message across. Do you think that is sufficient to overcome the Prime Time Bias against them, especially if one of them puts a stellar show? Also, how much will a good performance in the JV debate affect their poll standings and future invitations to prime time debates? — Anirudh Ravishankar A: It’s the post-debate media coverage that matters more than the debate itself. So there are still opportunities for the candidates in the first debate, even if the real-time viewership numbers are a little lower. But will it be easier to get a message across? It’s tempting to say the JV debate will be less dramatic since there won’t be a Donald Trump in it. But what’s interesting is that none of those JV candidates have anything to lose. If Bobby Jindal or Rick Perry wants to raise any level of elite and donor enthusiasm for his campaign, for instance, he’s going to have to make a mark soon. I’d expect everyone to come out swinging.

If you aren’t psyched for tonight’s debates, then you probably have no business calling yourself a politics fan. The debate will likely be great entertainment, but it may also upend the polling. Yes, there are certain primary debate moments that made a difference. In 2012, Mitt Romney saw his poll numbers in South Carolina decline after getting attacked in a debate in the week leading up to the South Carolina primary. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, saw his poll numbers rise quickly after attacking the moderator in a debate later that week. Indeed, a number of studies have found that people are far more likely to change their minds about candidates after a primary debate than a general election debate. Mitchell S. McKinney and Benjamin R. Warner of the University of Missouri studied college students and discovered that they were more likely to view candidates more favorably after a primary debate. That shouldn’t be surprising as candidates are far less known in a primary than a general election. The issue is that often times debate moments don’t make the difference they were perceived to have. Remember Rick Perry’s “oops” moment in 2012? He was already way down in the polls by that point. How about when Hillary Clinton waffled on drivers licenses for immigrants who are here illegally in a late October 2007 debate? Clinton’s numbers were actually relatively steady for more than a week after the debate. RealClearPolitics’ David Byler studied the polling averages of all the candidates the day of and seven days after the debate for the 2012 primary and found that the most frequent result was no change in candidate support.

As Josef Stalin didn’t quite say, “He who answers the questions decides nothing, he who asks the questions decides everything.” That’s why, tonight, during the first Republican primary debates, we’ll be tracking the topics the Fox News moderators focus on. We’ll log whether questions address social issues, economic issues or foreign policy — but also whether the question is about a candidate’s previous record in office, tactics in the present campaign or what a candidate will do if elected president. When it comes to the candidates, we’ll be watching and tallying every attack they make on a rival. Will the candidates bother to take potshots at Trump or give him the cold shoulder? Will debaters in the 5 p.m. JV debate confront the people they are sharing the stage with, or will they focus on the front-runners? Are there other data points we should log during the debates? Speak now, or forever hold your spreadsheets!

While you’re watching the debates tonight, keep the candidates’ positioning in mind.

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s live blog of the first Republican primary debate, hosted by Fox News. We’ll be here for the JV debate at 5 p.m. and the varsity debate at 9 p.m. (and all the time in between). Stay tuned: This live blog will be — roughly speaking — 5 percent debate analysis, 10 percent general 2016 analysis, 5 percent data-driven snark and 80 percent Trumping.