ABC News Photo Illustration(NEW YORK) -- The first Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary will begin shortly in Milwaukee.
Eight candidates have qualified for a spot on the stage: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Missing from the event will be the primary's early front-runner: former President Donald Trump, who declined to participate and is instead releasing an interview with Tucker Carlson.
ABC News and FiveThirtyEight will be live-blogging every major moment and highlight from the debate, which begins at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox News, with FiveThirtyEight providing analysis and a closer look at the polling and data behind the politicians. PolitiFact will be making real-time fact checks of key statements.
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Trump has a huge lead in the endorsement primary Meet your PolitiFact contributor Will Biden debate the GOP victor? His team is noncommittal -- for now Check in on our polling average Trump won't be at the GOP debate. Will it matter? What to watch for in 1st Republican primary debate Here's how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Aug 23, 8:34 PM EDT Which issues are Republican voters most concerned about?
Before tonight’s debate kicks off, FiveThirtyEight, The Washington Post and Ipsos partnered to ask Republican voters about how they might vote in the upcoming Republican presidential primaries. Specifically, we asked 4,968 likely Republican voters which issues are most important to them when deciding which candidate to vote for in the primaries, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel.
We offered respondents a list of 16 issues and allowed them to select up to three. Of the topics that we asked about, voters were most concerned about “getting inflation or increasing costs under control” (53 percent of respondents selected this issue), something Republican voters have been concerned about since at least the 2022 midterms, according to a previous FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll. Other issues that were top of mind for voters were “controlling immigration” (36 percent), “someone fighting against liberalism and the woke agenda” (25 percent) and “ability to beat Joe Biden” (25 percent).
If tonight’s debate touches upon those top issues, voters might get some clarity on who they are considering voting for when primary season comes around.
-Analysis by Holly Fuong of FiveThirtyEight
Aug 23, 8:30 PM EDT The facts about the 2024 GOP hopefuls
At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from True to Pants on Fire false for the most ridiculous claims.
If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road.
First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead.
We focus on claims that are particularly interesting, in the news or obviously potentially wrong. Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Pence tonight claims that he and Trump “achieved energy independence” in their first three years in office, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think.
In Pence’s case, yes, the United States did produce more energy than its citizens consumed during the Trump/Pence White House, but that was built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewables. And the U.S. did not produce more gasoline than it consumed (which is maybe what you were thinking about). And if that’s not enough, even though the U.S. didn’t use all the energy it produced, it still imported a substantial amount of energy to serve domestic markets.
So far in this cycle, we’ve published 52 fact-checks of the GOP candidates. Our checks tend to follow the polling of the race. We’ve fact-checked Trump 17 times, DeSantis 14 times, Pence six times, Haley and Tim Scott each five times, and so on. We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact
Aug 23, 8:25 PM EDT Why is the debate in Wisconsin?
I flew to Milwaukee earlier this week to talk to some local voters and learn more about why the GOP decided to have its first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle in the state.
-Analysis by Galen Druke of FiveThirtyEight
Aug 23, 8:21 PM EDT DeSantis’s campaign shake-ups
DeSantis remains Trump’s closest challenger, but his support has been dropping over the past several months: He currently trails the former president by nearly 40 percentage points in our national polling average.
With that drop have come some shake-ups in the DeSantis campaign. The campaign has laid off around one-third of its 92-person staff, with the latest cuts coming in July, according to ABC News. Changes stretched all the way to the top: DeSantis replaced his campaign manager with his governor’s office chief of staff. On top of that, some of his top donors have voiced concerns, saying they want DeSantis to recruit more major donors and take a more moderate approach on social issues.
All of that has made this debate crucial for DeSantis, both in terms of trying to chip away at Trump’s lead and proving to his supporters that he actually has a shot. He’s recruited a veteran debate coach and is getting advice from a supportive super PAC, according to The New York Times. That advice? Rather than attack the front-runner, DeSantis should “take a sledgehammer” to Ramaswamy who, unlike DeSantis, is rising in the polls. DeSantis won’t just be trying to win the debate tonight: He’s also aiming to push back against the rolling tide of news that hints at a flailing campaign.
-Analysis by Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight
Aug 23, 8:19 PM EDT Why DeSantis, Ramaswamy will literally be center stage
DeSantis and Ramaswamy, both newcomers to the presidential debate stage, will appear front and center on Wednesday night.
That's because where candidates will stand was determined by how they are faring in the polls.
More seasoned politicians, such as Pence or Christie, have been placed closer to the outer rim because of their more middling numbers so far. Hutchinson and Burgum will stand on either end.
-ABC News' Alexandra Hutzler
Aug 23, 8:16 PM EDT Which candidates are winning the money race?
Money isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of political campaigns — but it sure helps, especially during the early phases of a primary. And in the 2024 pocketbook primary, the leaders so far are Trump (who raised $17.7 million in April, May and June) and DeSantis (who raised $20.1 million). These figures are striking, but you also have to account for how much time each candidate has been in the race. For instance, DeSantis jumped in in late May, so he had much less time in which to raise that money than Trump. Here’s a chart of who raised the most in the second quarter on a prorated basis.
But there’s also important context that those topline fundraising numbers don’t tell you. For instance, Burgum’s and Ramaswamy’s totals aren’t as impressive as they look — most of their fundraising came from their own wallets rather than from grassroots donors. Burgum self-funded $10.1 million of his $11.8 million haul, and Ramaswamy self-funded $5.0 million of his $7.7 million total.
On the other end of the spectrum, Scott is in better financial shape than his $5.9 million raised would suggest. That’s because he has more than $21 million cash on hand, thanks to money he carried over from his high-rolling Senate campaigns.
-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight
Aug 23, 8:14 PM EDT Who’s dishing out for advertisements?
One challenger to Trump has surged ahead — in ad buys, at least. Scott announced an $8 million ad buy this month. The bulk of that, $6.6 million, will go toward TV advertisem