That's It, Folks
It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking for a “game change” moment at these debates. Saturday night’s debate, though, likely didn’t produce one.
There were no amazing one-line put downs. None of the candidates made an egregious statement likely to offend a big group of voters. No one made some misstatement of fact that was so bad as to expose them as not knowing what they were talking about.
You can see that in our debate grades, where the FiveThirtyEight staff grades the candidates on how much each improved (or hurt) their chances of winning the nomination.
The FiveThirtyEight team, on average, gave Hillary Clinton a B+, slightly ahead of both Bernie Sanders’ B and Martin O’Malley’s C.
That’s not a tremendous debate “win” for Clinton, but she doesn’t need to win these debates by a wide margin. She continues to lead the race in Iowa — though that lead is not entirely safe — and she continues to hold a massive advantage with the Democratic establishment and non-white voters. Clinton’s just looking to run out the clock; the status quo is good for her, and the third Democratic debate is unlikely to change the status quo.
Anyway, if you’re reading this the day-after, and you didn’t watch the debate, start at the bottom to see what happened chronologically. Otherwise, here were a few highlights:
| CANDIDATE | AVERAGE GRADE | HIGH GRADE | LOW GRADE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hillary Clinton | B+ | A | B |
| Bernie Sanders | B | A- | C |
| Martin O’Malley | C | B+ | D |
- Clinton didn’t really go after Sanders for the data breach controversy;
- Donald Trump was the only Republican name-checked by the Democratic candidates;
- We considered O’Malley’s suitability as a vice-presidential pick;
- Nate asked whether the Democrats’ weekend debate schedule is worse for Clinton;
- O’Malley joined a long list of governors who claim undue credit for balancing their state’s budget.