The eighth Republican presidential primary debate is in the books. Let’s take a look at who got the most speaking time:
For the second debate in a row, Marco Rubio got the most speaking time, with more than 18 minutes. Ted Cruz had the most speaking time in the three debates prior to the start of Rubio’s streak. In debates prior, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina had the most speaking time.
Rubio had nearly one-fifth of the total speaking time. Cruz was a very close second, within one minute of Rubio. Trump came in less than a minute behind Cruz, with the trio forming their own tier on top of speaking time. The next tier of air time had everyone except Ben Carson, who spoke for the least amount of time in the third straight debate. He spoke for less than nine minutes, almost 10 minutes less than Rubio.
Cruz, Rubio and Trump each spoke enough to get more than their fair share of speaking time, assuming you believe each candidate should have had equal time.
On the other hand, if you believe higher-polling candidates should get more speaking time, then Trump and Cruz didn’t get to speak enough. In a national average of polls, Trump gets 31 percent support and Cruz gets 22 percent. Saturday night, Trump and Cruz got only about 18 percent of speaking time each.
Every other candidate spoke for a greater portion of the debate than their share of support in the polls. As he has in a few debates, John Kasich had the largest gap between his portion of speaking time and his share of poll support, with almost 10 percentage points separating the two.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
