Who Won The January Democratic Debate? – FiveThirtyEight

Tuesday nights debate was the last one before the voting starts in Iowa, and before the debate, our forecast thought there was roughly a four-way tie for who will win the caucuses. So to get more insight into this neck and neck race, we once again partnered with Ipsos to track how the debate, hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register, affected likely primary voters feelings about the candidates on the stage. The FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsoss KnowledgePanel, interviewed the same group of voters twice, once on either side of the debate, to capture both the before and after picture.

To better understand which candidates did well or poorly Tuesday night, we plotted how favorably respondents rated the candidates before the debate vs. how debate-watchers rated candidates performances afterward and Elizabeth Warren, in particular, seemed to have a breakout evening according to this metric. She not only received the highest marks for her debate performance, but her scores were high even relative to her pre-debate favorability rating.

That said, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden also received medium-to-high marks for their performances, but because of their relatively high pre-debate favorability ratings, we expected a lot of voters to already be predisposed to viewing their debate performances in a positive light. So while they still did pretty well on the debate stage, they didnt exceed expectations the way Warren did. Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer, on the other hand, tied for the lowest overall debate grades, putting them only barely above where wed expect them to be given their pre-debate favorability ratings.

In terms of raw debate grades respondents graded candidates on a four-point scale (higher scores are better) Warren got the highest average score, closely followed by Sanders, Buttigeg and Biden.

Before debateAfter debate

Respondents could pick multiple candidates or someone else.

Unsurprisingly, given her strong debate performance, Warren was also the biggest winner in terms of attracting potential voters. She gained a little over 3 points in the share of respondents who said they were considering voting for her. Buttigieg and Klobuchar also gained roughly 2 points each in potential support. Gains were pretty small for the other candidates, though less than a point each for Biden and Sanders, and a little over 1 point for Steyer.

UnfavorableFavorableBefore debateAfter debate

We also asked likely Democratic primary voters how favorably they felt about each candidate both before and after the debate. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the less-well-known candidates who gained the most: Klobuchar and Steyer saw the largest jumps in net favorability (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) 5.8 points and 5 points, respectively. Buttigieg and Warren also did well on this metric, however, with Buttigieg picking up 4.7 points and Warren 3.9 points. Sanders and Bidens net favorability, on the other hand, actually fell a bit Bidens dropped by 1.6 points, and Sanders took the biggest hit in this metric, falling by 3.6 points.

Excludes respondents who chose I don't know enough to say.

Voters were also asked what matters more to them a candidate who agrees with them on most issues or someone who would have a good chance of defeating President Trump and as you can see, there was no change in these numbers. Democratic primary voters really want a candidate who can beat Trump.

Finally, we asked respondents to estimate each Democrats chances of defeating Trump, from 0 percent (no chance) to 100 percent (certain to win). Going into the debate, as in other general-election polls, Biden was the candidate voters thought was most likely to beat Trump, on average. He still leads on that question after Tuesdays debate, with Sanders in second. But, as you can see below, Bidens average stayed essentially unchanged while all the other candidates gained ground.

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Who Won The January Democratic Debate? - FiveThirtyEight