Now that the third Republican presidential debate is in the books, Red Alert Politics talked to University of Colorado students to find out what they thought of the performance and whether any progress has been made to narrow down the large field of candidates.
Students from the CU College Republicans and College Democrats both expressed disappointment about the lack of student issues discussed during the debate.
“It would’ve been nice to hear them talk about [student loans],” said Ian Andrews of the CU College Republicans. “They didn’t really discuss it which surprised me because it was held at a university.”
“Every candidate proposed a lot of tax cuts and rolling back regulation,” said College Democrats President Javier Mabrey. “But I heard nothing about how we’re going to make college more accessible and affordable.”
Andrews said the best part of the debate was to see the candidates unifying against the CNBC moderators.
“Instead of attacking each other they started defending each other,” he said. “Instead of ‘I’m better than you’ it actually became about the issues.”
Andrews thought the definite debate winners were Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and the clear losers were Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.
“[Trump] didn’t really say anything new,” he pointed out. “It wasn’t a Trump show like the first two debates.”
Mabrey thought Rubio won the debate because he “did the most to improve his chances of being the nominee.”
