Who Really Won the Republican Presidential Debate – Top 3 Takeaways – August 25th, 2023
- Ok, Trump won the debate. In yesterday’s takeaways I said this: Everyone who cares has an opinion about what happened on the debate stage last night. The one that matters is yours. Pundits like to talk about who won or lost debates. The answer is ultimately what you thought was the case. And that’s why I can now definitively say that Trump won the debate. That’s because people have voted with their eyeballs and in terms of what people most wanted to see it was Trump. The initial ratings estimate for the first Republican Presidential debate came in at approximately 10 million people who watched Wednesday night’s debate live on Fox News. A decent number? Yes, that’s 3-4 times the usual Wednesday night audience on the highest rated news channel. But why wasn’t it even larger? Probably because people were busy watching what turned out to be the main attraction on X. By the end of the Republican Presidential debate, the Tucker Carlson – Donald Trump prerecorded interview, which was 46 minutes long and first aired 5 minutes prior to the start of the debate, had 72 million views. That 72 to 10 margin is even larger than the 41 – point advantage that Trump had in the polls preceding the first debate. It’s unclear how many additional views the debate received after initial airing (Fox News has made it available on their platform which doesn’t publicly provide views) but I’m pretty sure it’s a few fewer than the 209 million total views the Tucker-Trump interview had racked up by midday Thursday (it’s at 252 million this morning). Quoting Trump in the interview with Tucker when asked about skipping the debate and whether television is in decline he said: We’re doing this interview, but we’ll get higher ratings on this crazy forum that you’re using than probably the debate - competition. Truer words have not been spoken. And right next to Trump having evidently won debate night, you’ve got to imagine Elon Musk was the biggest winner – followed closely by Tucker. Elon’s done so much so quickly to the platform formally known as Twitter, that people literally have to tell people when they’re using it that it used to be Twitter. Twitter was most certainly not known as a long form video platform. Maybe X won’t be either. But Meta’s Threads, which was billed as the Twitter killer when X was still Twitter, has quickly become little more than a joke. Rather than spending more time on social media with it – people are just opting to spend less time on social media generally – which frankly is a great thing for society. As an aside, if you didn’t know, social media usage has fallen to its lowest levels in nine years. I’ll save that topic for another day though. In any event, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which currently has an identity crisis, is now a proven longform video platform just like that. It’s the kind of win Elon and the X-men needed. Oh, and then there was the other X post seen and heard around the world last night as the former president himself made his return to the platform for the first time since being deplatformed while still president. Trump posted his mugshot from the Fulton County jail with the message... ELECTION INTERFERENCE NEVER SURRENDER! He’s baaack... As for who won the actual debate...
- It’s essentially a two-way tie at the top with a slight edge to Lil’ M in one poll & Florida’s governor in another. The first accredited post-debate poll of Republican primary voters who watched the first GOP Presidential Debate on Fox News said this when asked “who had the best debate performance?”. Vivek Ramaswamy, aka Lil’ M came out on top with 28% support with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis close behind at 27%. Former Vice President Mike Pence was the only other candidate to gain double-digit support with 13% suggesting he performed best. The second accredited poll released, which was the Washington Post FiveThirtyEight Ipsos poll, reversed the two at the top with what were otherwise similar numbers. DeSantis pulled out the win with 29%, Ramaswamy with 26% support and Nikki Haley being the only other candidate in double digits with 15%. These polls stand in contrast to the typical punditry of the political class of news reporters who commonly suggested Nikki Haley and Mike Pence were runaway winners while Ramaswamy was commonly called the biggest loser. Public perception once again stands in contrast to pundit perception. And btw, I say this as someone who thinks Nikki performed especially well on the debate stage...ditto Doug Burgum for that matter. This feels like a different version of a similar thing to when in 2015 the Jeb! people and pundits talked his platform and performances up while actual voters couldn’t have cared less. Ramaswamy’s initial polling win in his first ever political debate brought about headlines like this in from the Daily Mail: Meet Vivek Ramaswamy: the standout GOP star of the first Republican debate is a married father of two who’s Ivy League educated and likes rapping to Eminem. And while the headline seems a bit over the top for one-point polling win in one poll with a second-place finish in another, it wasn’t just DeSantis he edged out by a point. When Trump was included in a question” Who do you think was the real winner of the debate”?
- He edged Trump out by a point too. Now again, this was only conducted of those who watched the debate live on Fox News as opposed to those who opted to watch Trump and Tucker which likely skews the sample, but it’s not nothing. Especially for someone no one had heard of six months ago. As I first said in mid-July...Six months ago, you’d never heard his name. Six months from now, he just might be the name this side of Trump to watch in Republican primary circles. Ramaswamy is one to watch and the candidate who stands to gain the most from the first GOP Presidential Debate. Based on the early polling returns...he just may have gained the most from it. And as for DeSantis – his performance at least seemed to be good enough to stop the bleeding, however the competition to remain the top contender to Donald Trump appears to have become even more challenging. DeSantis may have further distanced himself from the third-tier candidates in this race, but Ramaswamy appears poised to join him in the 2nd tier and that is potentially good news for Trump...because as I’ve said previously, given Trump’s significant lead there’s only room for one non-Trump contender in this field if that contender is to have a realistic chance of winning the nomination. There’s still plenty of time for the field to whittle down before votes start to count and delegates begin to be issued in January.