Fox News Undercard Republican Debate: Live Coverage

So that wraps up our live blog of the undercard debate (check out our live blog of the main stage Republican debate). Tonight’s festivities may be the last undercard debate of this campaign, so it’s worth noting just how amazing it is that we had these undercard contests at all. Could any of the undercard candidates have made more of a run if they’d been given equal footing with the main-stage candidates in all these debates? That’s hard to say, and something that will likely be studied. But using national polls to relegate some candidates in a presidential primary isn’t exactly beyond reproach.

Twelve percent of all the questions asked at the undercard debate were variants on “isn’t it a little ridiculous you’re still in the race.” By my count, just over half were on policy, and many of the rest were on the state of the campaign.

President Obama’s approval rating is now 46.9 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, his highest figure since June 2013. His approval rating exceeds his disapproval rating in several recent polls, which has been a rarity for most of his second term. It’s probably just a random fluctuation, or a result of the solid jobs numbers recent. But who knows: Maybe Obama looks a little better in comparison to the unpopular set of candidates they’ve been seeing and hearing so much from lately.