2 winners and 3 losers from the first Republican debate

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

51% : The differences between the candidates were clear, their varied experiences were on full display, and at certain points, you could see a flash of an old kind of pre-Trump Republican Party debate, deliberating over government spending, illegal immigration, and foreign policy.
47% : Yes, each of the debate contenders had their moments of brilliance: Mike Pence caught a second wind when the topics of abortion, January 6, and foreign policy came up; Ramaswamy picked fights with Pence and Christie, held his own against them, and seemed to stun the contenders with his witty replies; and Haley, seemingly fed up with Ramaswamy toward the end of the night, hammered him on his foreign policy positions.
42% : Would the candidates support using lethal force at the Southern border against drug cartels?
42% : Would they freeze government spending?
38% : Though the mood changed as the candidates sniped at each other as the night progressed, for at least the first hour of the debate, the constant talk about debts, balancing budgets, confronting Russia and China, and standing against abortion felt like a callback to a different era of Republican politics.
10% : It wasn't until former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley criticized the nearly $8 trillion of federal spending authorized during the Trump presidency that any of the eight candidates criticized the primary's frontrunner -- and that wasn't until about 15 minutes into the debate.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.