I watched the first Republican primary debate. I have a definite opinion on who won. Below, I capture some clips from the debate. I also found a reliable poll about how each candidate did, and how their favorable and unfavorable numbers changed.

I come at politics from a very different place than most Americans, even the ones who agree with me on political parties. My experience with “voting” is limited to hiring new engineers. I’m a senior software engineer, and I get called into interviews to test whether applicants can actually do what they wrote on their resume. So, I ask questions that will test for that, such as “tell me about a time when you were on production support and had a P1 that lasted longer than an hour” or “tell me about a time when you to make changes to your application due to a vulnerability scan” or “tell me about how your re-write of the payment processing system complies with PCI standards”. I don’t want someone who was just present, I want the person who led the effort and learned the lessons.

So, I’m not interested in popular opinions or slogans. I’m looking for the story of how you solved the problem, especially if you had to push back against other team members in order to get the job done. We don’t want someone who thinks too highly of themselves or just throws out cool-sounding opinions or insults. We want someone who can persuade or convince others and lead a team to a result. That is how change is driven in the real world. Not by commands, but by technical leadership – by persuading people to want to do what you want them to do.

So, with that in mind, check out these clips from the debate.

DeSantis opening speech:

On abortion: (notice how he has passed a very restrictive law in a purple state, which Trump thinks is too restrictive)

The only candidate with military service – focus on the mission, not office politics:

Would use lethal military force on drug cartels at the southern border:

Instead of expressing “future plans” that he has no experience implementing, he talks about what he learned from past achievements – this time in education policy:

The biggest issue of the election for me is the secular left weaponizing government against Christians and conservatives. And I’m looking for actions, not slick talk. DeSantis was the only candidate on the stage who had actions on this topic:

Concluding speech focuses on parent’s rights:

All right, that’s enough from the debate, let’s take a look at the Ipsos / Washington Post poll numbers.

Here are the changes in support (how much voters are considering voting for the candidate) for people who WATCHED THE DEBATE:

• DeSantis: 67.5 % (up from 63.0 %)
• Trump: 61.4 % (down from 66.2 %)
• Haley: 46.7 % (up from 30.2 %)
• Ramaswamy: 46.3 % (up from 40.8 %)
• Scott: 43.1 % (up from 41.1%)

So, Trump definitely lost the debate by not showing up, which I think is not what you see from “don’t care, voting for Trump anyway” people on Twitter.

What is most interesting I think is the net favorable / unfavorable rating, among likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate:

• DeSantis: 72.4 % favorable vs 24.7% unfavorable
• Ramaswamy: 60.4 % favorable vs 31.8 % unfavorable
• Trump: 59.8 % favorable vs 35.6% unfavorable
• Haley: 65.5 % favorable vs 26.8 % unfavorable
• Scott: 65.3 % favorable vs 23.2 % unfavorable

Of the leading candidates, Trump has the highest unfavorable ratings, by far. To me, DeSantis is more conservative than Trump (based on achievements, not words), more disciplined than Trump in his speaking, and has more appeal to independents and suburban moms than Trump. I want to win the next election, not be entertained by zingers and tweets.

So, that’s where we stand right now. I am hoping that they will focus on only a few debate participants next debate:  the top 4 only. And that we will see longer timed speeches, with no audience interruptions. They really need to have longer-form debates, instead of 1-minute sound bites.

Related posts

• Video and outline: Tucker Carlson interviews Ron DeSantis on Blaze TV
• Mamas for DeSantis: Casey DeSantis champions parent’s rights at the national level
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