An introduction to the Republican contenders
A first look after the first debates of the 2024 cycle
The first RNC debate marks a key moment in the contest for the Republican nomination for president - and also helps define who the contenders are. For many likely primary voters, this debate was their first chance to put the alternatives next to each other and compare them. As an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina, I’m eligible to participate in either party’s primaries, so that includes me.
There were significant and visible differences between the Republican candidates on the stage - and also some important differences not seen on the stage.
I’ll briefly talk about the eight Republican candidates at the debate, using the official order of poll-based precedence presented by Fox News in their coverage of the debate and used to determine their seating chart (above). I’ll also note that 538 has an instant-polling take on the matter; that data is worth parsing.
Ron DeSantis
Ron DeSantis is the governor of Florida, elected in 2018 by a narrow margin in a strongly Democratic cycle and re-elected in 2022 by a decisive margin in a weakly Republican cycle. Since 2022 (and arguably since 2018), he has been the most prominent Republican governor in the country.
He has generally positioned himself as a hard-line conservative while primarily focusing on key culture war issues where Democrats are on the losing side of public opinion. His track record in doing so at the state level is reflected in his strong approval ratings as governor of Florida and his incredibly decisive re-election victory in 2022. This track record is DeSantis’s main case for why he should be the nominee.
DeSantis has struggled to translate his state-level success into national popularity. Part of this can be ascribed to unfriendly media coverage, but many pundits have also accused him of being robotic, lacking charisma and the ability to improvise. Based on his debate stage performance last night, that accusation has merit.
He regularly dodged questions, giving well-scripted but unrelated answers, and did not interact very much with the other candidates. Strategically, this may have been the best choice in order to avoid negative coverage, but it did not impress. His opinions on national issues may be less palatable to the mainstream public than his record as governor, including a desire to cut aid to Ukraine and a promise to invade Mexico with US special forces.1
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy is a young entrepreneur who has none of the traditional qualifications to become president and only voted in two of the last five presidential elections. He’s also a Trump superfan and pledged to pardon Trump if elected. His main pitch to Republican voters last night consisted of calling all the other candidates “bought,” and presenting himself as an Obama-esque outsider, recycling Obama’s description of himself as “a skinny kid with a funny name.”
During the debate, Vivek2 was roundly attacked by most of the other candidates. Chris Christie attacked him for comparing himself to Obama (by criticizing Obama), pointed out that Vivek was saying things at odds with what was written in Vivek’s book, and compared him to ChatGPT. Nikki Haley took him to task for calling climate change a “hoax” and for supporting handing Ukraine over to Russia and Taiwan to China.
Vivek’s appeal to younger voters may be limited by his desire to raise the general age of voting to 25. For readers who remember the hotly-contested Democratic 2020 cycle, he came across stylistically as similar to a Republican version of a cross between Pete Buttigieg (youthful energy, very articulate and energetic) and Marianne Williamson (kooky outsider with some very unusual opinions). Much like Trump (or ChatGPT), Vivek will confidently pronounce things that are neither true nor consistent with what he has said previously.
Mike Pence
Mike Pence is in an unusual position both as Trump’s former vice president and as one of Trump’s clearest enemies. He spent this debate threading the needle between claiming credit for the policies of what he referred to as the Trump-Pence administration while distinguishing himself from Trump on moral grounds.
Although Pence was in the #3 slot, someone not following the polling or the presentation might have assumed he was the front-runner; last night’s debate was much more of a Pence-Vivek debate than a DeSantis-Vivek debate. Pence emerged looking like a conservative man of integrity and experience who stands by his principles and has earned the respect of his peers.
Trump loyalists still hate him for his refusal to cooperate with Trump’s scheme to flip the electoral vote on January 6th. His policy positions are conventional and conservative - in favor of continuing to support Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel (unlike Vivek) and attempting to pass a national abortion ban (unlike Haley and Burgum).
Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley pulled no punches at the debate, bluntly saying out loud that Republicans who had claimed to be fiscally responsible were responsible for most of the national debt, including Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Pence. As a governor who never served in Congress, Haley had that liberty. She blasted the idea of a federal abortion ban as unrealistic, pointing out that such a move would require the support of 60 senators.
She also ripped into Vivek on climate change (it’s real, China and India are the major drivers) and foreign policy (handing Taiwan to China and Ukraine to Putin is morally bankrupt and strategically stupid). As former UN ambassador, her foreign policy credentials are one of her strong points.
Her main pitch to voters was framing herself as pragmatic, saying that she would get things done rather than spout empty rhetoric.
Chris Christie
Chris Christie had one of the simplest and most powerful arguments for why voters should support him as Republican nominee: Unlike every other contender on stage, he actually had won an election against a Democratic incumbent. Unlike every other contender on stage, he’d won the popular vote in a “blue” state. He has a proven track record of electoral overperformance.
He also took point in drawing a hard line in the sand against Trump, saying in no uncertain terms that Trump’s conduct disqualified him from being worthy to serve as president again and bluntly stating that he would not support Trump for president if Trump were re-nominated. He drew boos from the audience, but didn’t back down.
Christie was on point in debate terms. He did not dodge questions or answer with canned and rehearsed speeches veering quickly off topic. He also immediately caught Vivek’s use of Obama’s “skinny kid with a funny name” line and called him out on that, as well as the inconsistencies between what Vivek was saying during the debate and what he had written in his book. Christie was on fire.
Tim Scott
The lone senator on the stage, Tim Scott faces an uphill battle when it comes to proving his electability moving forward, and he had to defend an inconvenient (but ordinary) voting record. I feel certain he’s smarter than most people think he sounds, and I suspect that on his own terms, he is a skilled orator.
He just rarely had the time to get going on the debate stage, and his lack of executive experience meant that he didn’t have the same kind of track record to throw around as the six former governors who made up most of the opposition. With his slow-paced speech and accent, he was on the opposite extreme from Vivek in terms of his presentation.
Asa Hutchinson & Doug Burgum
The bottom-seeded candidates in the debate were a study in contrasts. Both are at least theoretically small-government conservatives. Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, supports a federal abortion ban; Burgum, the current governor of North Dakota, thinks federal laws on the topic are an unconstitutional overreach. Hutchinson would not support a convicted Trump nominated by the Republican Party; Burgum would.
Neither got much air time during the debate, and Burgum was fighting through the pain of a fresh leg injury; he stood on one leg on stage throughout the debate, a display of stoicism that reminded me of Amy Klobuchar’s decision to announce her candidacy outdoors during a snowstorm.
The instant polling reaction
FiveThirtyEight.com partnered with Ipsos to measure two useful instant measures of who won and lost the debate, as well as several non-useful measures. The most usable measure was polling favorability of the candidates before and after the debates.
Based on changes in net favorability among the debate audience, Vivek Ramaswamy did badly in the debate. He gained visibility, but voters who weren’t familiar with him mostly did not like what they saw. The same is true for Asa Hutchinson and Tim Scott.
In raw net favorability terms, the candidates who got the most out of the debate were Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, with Mike Pence posting a strong performance. Ron DeSantis’s decision to treat the debate as an opportunity to give short speeches while mostly ignoring the other candidate seems to have paid off as well.
The idea here is to take on drug cartels.
Vivek Ramaswamy has chosen to focus his candidate branding on his first name rather than his last name, and I will follow suit for what is likely the same reason: It’s short and identifiable.