What Went Down At The ABC Republican Debate

What will happen if Bush doesn’t have a strong showing? First, it doesn’t look terribly likely that Bush will come in third or better in New Hampshire. If that’s the case, can he stay in the race? In some ways it’s kind of surprising that he’s stayed in this long, given the lack of promise in polls, debates, etc. Something, perhaps the donors, perhaps other party pressures, perhaps family pressures that are beyond my qualifications to analyze, seems to be keeping him in. For Rubio, the stakes are high as well. He’s my vote for the candidate with the most to prove in the next couple of contests. This week, Rubio picked up a bunch of endorsements, pulling ahead by that measure. He’s running second — pretty distantly it looks like — to Trump in New Hampshire and got third in Iowa. He needs to show he could be a legitimate candidate with voters, too.

Carson’s answer on the Cruz mailer gives me a chance to trot out one of the only fancy words I know: Praeteritio. “I’m not going to mention my opponent’s despicable behavior…”

Yeah, I doubt it made much difference for Carson in Iowa, but I wonder if it’ll follow Cruz around a bit like the 3 a.m. ad did for Clinton in 2008.

We know that Ben Carson actually did better on caucus night than our forecasts indicated. It’s obviously possible that the calls cost Carson a few votes, but the truth is that we’ll never know. I’m guessing not much.

Do you think the “Carson is dropping out” calls from the Cruz campaign in Iowa made a difference?

Readers, in case you’re reading this blog not as a supplement to your debate watching but as a substitute for television (good for you!), there was just a real … moment at the very start of this verbal contest. Ben Carson’s name was announced and he was supposed to walk from the wings and onto the debate stage–except he didn’t. He just kinda stood there while the other candidates names were called and they walked out, past Carson, who just stood there. It was … very confusing. And frankly, very funny.

It might just be me, but I wish Ted Cruz was at the center of the debate stage and not Donald Trump. Cruz won Iowa, and there’s no reason to sort the candidate based on polls now that voting has actually started.

Debates themselves might be unpredictable. But predicting how the media will react to them may not be as challenging. Before last week’s Republican debate, I asked readers on Twitter who they thought the media would declare to have had the best night. The plurality answer was Donald Trump, despite Trump declining to participate in the debate. Indeed there were lots of “Trump won by not showing up” “hot takes” the morning after. This time around, I only remembered to ask the question a few minutes before the debate telecast began. But we quickly got about 800 responses, and your predictions are that Marco Rubio and Trump are the most likely to win good headlines tomorrow: Seems reasonable enough. Rubio is perceived to have momentum heading into the debate; an average performance is more likely to be seen favorably by the press under those conditions. And the media tends to love the Trump storyline. Personally, however, I wouldn’t overlook the “some other candidate” category, which includes each of John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Ben Carson. Tonight might be their last, best chance to turn their campaigns around, and the media might want to add to the drama by keeping them in the script.

https://twitter.com/ClareMalone/status/696141062423900160

The old conventional wisdom about primaries is that they’re all about candidates connecting with voters. Scholarship on primary communication –debates and speeches – emphasizes how candidates can use their messages to distinguish themselves from the rest of the field, or use debates to highlight opponents’ character shortcomings. Tonight’s debate also seems poised to do more than allow the candidates to define themselves. How much more can we find out about them at this point, really? With a field that still has some uncertainty and some pretty significant divisions, the next couple of days may help shape the story about what this choice means. One thing I keep coming back to is that in recent primaries, the sides have been pretty clearly defined – social conservatives, mavericks, and mainstream candidates. This time around, it has seemed much more like each candidate has been trying to figure out a brand of ideology that’s a different combination of social, economic, and mavericky conservatism. In the wake of the Iowa caucuses, it seems like this might change. Cruz, by following in the Iowa footsteps of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in the past two years, might fit into the “evangelicals’ candidate” slot; Trump is the (fading?) outsider, and Rubio – not Bush or Kasich – is now poised to be the mainstream, “establishment” candidate. One thing tonight’s debate may do is crystallize – or challenge – those characterizations.

Watching the pre-debate commercials on the local New Hampshire ABC affiliate, we got one for Jeb Bush, one for Carly Fiorina (who isn’t in the debate tonight) and one anti-Kasich ad. I didn’t recognize the name of the PAC that paid for that one, but perhaps it’s a sign that he’s the lower-tier candidate whom Rubio/Cruz are most worried about.

Q: How well do Christie and Kasich need to do to stay in the race? — commenter Neil Prateek Viswanathan A: I think Christie and Kasich would need to surprise everyone and finish like … a high third place. And even then, they don’t really have operations in states beyond New Hampshire, do they? So they would need to scramble to build an organization. I think barring a polling miracle, they are out after Tuesday.

On Bobby Reedy’s question of where the Bush/Christie/Kasich support could go: Voter preferences aren’t quite as simple as you might think. Somewhere out there, there are voters who have Jeb Bush as their first choice, Ben Carson as their second, and Ted Cruz as their third. But polls have consistently shown that Rubio has a lot of second-choice support, especially from the three candidates you mentioned.

Q: If Kasich, Christie, and Bush were to drop out after New Hampshire, which candidate would most likely take in their supporters? — commenter Bobby Reedy A: Rubio. Where else would they go? Trump? Cruz?

According to Betfair, Rubio has a 55 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination, which is well ahead of any other candidate. So the simple answer is that he has the most on the line. Perhaps those chances would go up to 60 percent if he has a really good debate or down to 50 percent if he has a really bad one. That’s a big swing in the scheme of things.

I’m tempted to say Trump, who needs to show that he’s got his mojo back. The last time we saw him on national TV he was giving a very pedestrian and cowed concession speech in Iowa. The last time he was part of a debate he was … not part of the debate. But in reality, I think it’s Rubio. If he’s really going to seize the mantle of consensus “safe” pick he’s got to move out of second gear, fully dispatch Kasich/Bush/Christie, and draw a stark contrast with Cruz.

I’m not sure there’s a really good answer to that, but I’d say Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich. They need a strong showing on Tuesday to keep going in this campaign. Bush and especially Kasich are close to Rubio for second place. If any of them have a moment tonight, they may remember it as the night they saved their campaign.

I would say that at this point, it’s the front-runners for whom this matters most: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. To a certain extent, the rest of the field are just sort of biding their time, whether they’ve realized it or not, before they drop out. Cruz and Rubio need to look good against Trump, who’s back in the debate hall tonight, so that’ll be interesting to see.

Who has the most riding on tonight’s debate?

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s coverage of the five-hundred-and-thirty-eighth Republican debate [Editor’s note: actually just the eighth], which begins tonight at 8 p.m. on ABC News. Clare Malone and Harry Enten are on scene for the event, which means they’ll be watching the debate on television in a giant gymnasium with hundreds of other members of the press corps who are constantly checking one another’s Twitter feeds. The rest of us will be doing pretty much the same thing, except from the comfort of our New Hampshire hotel rooms or tax-deductible home offices. All kidding aside, this is probably the most important debate of the election so far. With only three days to go until Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, strong or weak performances could shift the order of finish here, where voters often surprise us with last-minute reversals. Even polling leader Donald Trump is not totally safe — and remember that any fallout from tonight might not show up in time to fully register in the last round of polls we get before Tuesday. This is also the last time you may be seeing or hearing from several of the candidates on stage. Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Ben Carson are all extremely vulnerable and might not be much longer for the race. Kasich and Christie have focused their efforts on New Hampshire for months, and if they can’t improve upon their current position in the polls here, there’s little reason to think they’ll have an impact in other states. Bush’s position isn’t much better, except that he and his super PAC would have enough money to indulge in whatever slim chances his campaign imagines it has. All three of Bush, Christie and Kasich figure to be going after Marco Rubio, who received a raft of endorsements after Iowa and could soon become the consensus choice of “party elites” with a strong performance in New Hampshire.

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