The numbers are still rolling in from Wednesday’s GOP debate and despite the flame wars on the internet, the numbers are revealing some fascinating things. Typically, people are looking for how much someone’s approval numbers were doing afterward, but perhaps just as interesting are what the candidate’s unfavorability numbers a doing.
According to the Washington Post/Five-Thirty-Eight poll, the unfavorability rating of some GOP candidates shot upward after the debate with some even doubling the dislike people feel about them.
Vivek Ramaswamy went from a 13-point unfavorability rating to 32 points. Tim Scott went from 12 to 23 points, and Asa Hutchinson went from 23 points to 47. Nikki Haley’s seemed to increase as well, but not enough for it to be notable. Meanwhile, both Mike Pence and Chris Christie seemed to become slightly less unpopular, but both men still remain with high unfavorability ratings with 54 and 60 points respectively.
Ron DeSantis also seemed to decrease his unfavorability rating only slightly, but he’s the clear winner with his unfavorability rating at 25.
Some good numbers under the hood for Haley. https://t.co/KrZ2g9n4Z9
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 24, 2023
As Bonchie noted on Thursday, this poll also saw DeSantis walk away as the clear winner, beating out Ramaswamy by three points:
DeSantis 29%, Ramaswamy 26%, Haley 15%, Pence 7%, Christie and Scott 4%, Burgum and Hutchinson 1%. Alongside the track are three categories. None of these candidates: 13%.
The favorability rating for DeSantis sits at 72 points according to the poll, with Scott and Haley bringing up the rear at 65 points.
As it’s still very early in the game these numbers can turn on a dime, but despite all the impassioned fighting by online GOP voters and commentators, DeSantis can say that he came out looking much better than everyone else, at least according to this poll.
This is very good news for his campaign which, up until lately, was often criticized for being lackluster. Many said that he would make up ground during the debates and it would appear that this is bearing out as true. If DeSantis keeps this up, he could begin closing the gap between him and Donald Trump next.
If DeSantis does begin performing well in the polls, it may very well coax Trump to put himself on the debate stage after refusing to be on it. His reasoning was that his poll numbers were too high to worry about it, but this strategy may end up biting him as people get to know the other candidates more.
If DeSantis continues to rise, then Trump will have a problem on his hands.
However, at the end of the day, the GOP primary is decided by Republican voters and Trump largely has most of them in his camp, at least as of this writing. The post-debate numbers are still emerging, and more polls are going to be released that give us a more complete story.
After the debate, Chris Christie was exposed as a homosexual.