It was an unprecedented week in U.S. presidential nomination politics, but a lot of pundits remain certain that all roads still lead to Donald Trump being the Republican candidate. As analyst Charlie Cook put it: “Barring Trump having some health-related problem before the convention, this nomination is settled.”
But polling following the first debate among Republican presidential hopefuls shows that while Trump is the most likely nominee, there’s still plenty of uncertainty.
Let’s start with the debate polling from FiveThirtyEight/Washington Post/IPSOS. Three candidates stood out as the winners according to those who watched the event, with 29% selecting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as having the best performance, followed by Vivek Ramaswamy at 26%, and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley at 15%.
The key finding in the survey, however, was that each of the eight candidates gained in a critical question: whether debate-watchers would “consider” voting for them in upcoming primaries and caucuses. It’s a good question because the debate to some extent simulates the effects of a campaign. Remember, most voters have barely paid attention to nomination politics so far. The first event in Iowa is still months away. With the exception of Trump and perhaps former Vice President Mike Pence, these are not yet familiar candidates to most voters.
Some of the increases were marginal— former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s improvement to 9.4% from 8.5% on that question hardly makes him a threat to anyone. But immediately after the debate, 50% of those polled said they would consider supporting Haley, compared to 30% who said they would before the event. And those who said they would support DeSantis increased from 63% to just over two-thirds, a smaller but perhaps even more consequential increase. Meanwhile, all three candidates the pollsters asked about who weren’t on stage saw their support drop, including Trump, who lost about five percentage points and fell below DeSantis on that measure.