The third debate among the Republican presidential candidates — well, at least most of them — begins Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on CNBC. Here are five important things to be thinking about:
1) Debates can move the polls, but rarely determine the winner.
I said this right before the first GOP debate, and it’s still true. When political observers judge a candidate to have performed well, that usually translates into a bump in news coverage and in poll numbers. But that by itself isn’t enough. Ask Carly Fiorina. Here is a graph of her news coverage and poll numbers:
Both debates — including the first debate, where she appeared with the second-tier candidates — helped her. But the effect was temporary. Although debates can produce a good news cycle or two, that’s not how nominations are won. Which brings us to…
2) Debates can be “focal points” for the party.
As John Patty noted after the second debate, the key for Republican leaders who aren’t thrilled about Donald Trump or Ben Carson is to coalesce behind an alternative. But they haven’t done so. Here is an update to my earlier post on the pace of Republican endorsements compared with previous elections.
Very few Republican governors, senators, and members of Congress have endorsed any candidate. What they want (or at least should want) is a candidate with conventional ideological conventions and is seen as electable in November 2016.
Perhaps Wednesday night’s debate will provide some clues for them, or maybe — and I emphasize maybe — even help winnow the field a bit more so that there are fewer alternatives.
3) Jeb Bush doesn’t need a break-out debate Wednesday night.
Bush is languishing in the polls and prediction markets, and cutting back his campaign. None of that is good news, and I’m sure the Bush team would love for him to have a crushing debate victory.
But let’s be clear: he doesn’t need it Wednesday night. Bush has money, he has more supporters in the broader party network, and he is clearly playing a long game. Although he may not win the nomination, his eventual success or failure won’t hinge on how he does Wednesday night.
4) Will Carson and Trump cannibalize each other?
If you want to derail Trump’s candidacy, Carson’s rise in Iowa — and Trump’s sniping in return — is good news. Even better would be for them to attack each other and leave the other candidates (like Bush and Rubio) free to play their own game rather than having everything revolve around them vs. Trump. If two “outsiders” made it easier for the insiders, that would be an ironic twist.
5) For Trump, the crucial thing — as always — is how much news he can make.
Trump’s recent decline in the polls has ended, and his national poll numbers appear stable or even increasing. Once again, this reflects his ongoing prominence in news coverage, as the graph below shows.
So a question for Wednesday night is how much the moderators allow the questions and discussion to be directed at Trump. If he dominates the discussion, expect his dominance in news coverage to continue and, with it, his status as the front-runner in national polls.