Likely GOP primary voters share who had best Republican debate performance: Poll

Likely Republican voters think Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had the best performance in the second Republican debate, according to a new poll.

The poll was conducted by 538/Washington Post/Ispos and asked 2,262 likely voters in the Republican primary to grade each candidate’s performance during the debate, which was hosted on Wednesday night by FOX Business in Simi Valley, California.

Prior to the debate, pollsters asked likely GOP primary voters how they thought each candidate would perform. Overall, voters thought Vivek Ramaswamy would finish ahead of the rest, closely followed by DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

When polled following the debate, 33% of respondents thought DeSantis performed the best during the debate, followed by Haley at 18% and Ramaswamy at 15%.

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24% of people polled thought former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie performed the worst and 20% thought the same of former Vice President Mike Pence. 11% of voters thought North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum performed the worst, and 10% thought the same of Ramaswamy.

However, support among the field was largely unchanged after the debate.

Support for DeSantis increased from 51.0% to 51.9%, Haley’s went from 34.0% to 36.4%, and Scott’s went from 24.7% to 26.5%. In the poll, support for candidates is based on the percentage of polled voters considering voting for each individual.

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Ramaswamy slightly lost support, going from 27.2% to 28.1% as well as Pence, going from 23.4% to 24.2%.

Support for Former President Donald Trump went from 63.8% to 63.9%.

The poll also asked likely Republican primary voters what issues are most important in determining their primary vote, given the option to select up to 20 issues.

“Getting inflation or increased costs under control” was considered the most important issue to 55% of voters, “Controlling immigration” was considered a priority for 40% of voters, and “Ability to beat Joe Biden” was a priority for 24% of voters.