A disproportionate amount of Democrats show interest in watching the Republican debates, according to a recently released Pew survey reported by Politico. On the flip side, far fewer Republicans tune in to watch the Democratic showdowns.

Among people who have watched at least one debate, 70 percent of Democrats said they have seen a Republican debate, according to the survey that was released prior to Thursday night's debate. Only about half of Republicans responding to the same question said they had watched a Democratic debate.

Meanwhile, of Republicans who have watched debates, a whopping 94 percent said one of those debates was a GOP debate; a smaller 86 percent of Democrats who had watched debates could say one of them was a Democratic debate.

There could be a number of reasons for such a result, not the least of which is the draw of watching Donald Trump's performances. Additionally, there has been outcry about the Democratic debates' extremely inconvenient timing — all the debates have been on weekends, including the Saturday before Christmas and a Sunday in the middle of Martin Luther King Jr. Day's holiday weekend. Jeva Lange

The first gaffe of the presidential debate goes to … the presidential debate itself!

Of Hofstra University's 10,870 enrolled students, 350 won tickets to attend the debate through a lottery system. Hofstra University spokeswoman Karla Schuster clarified to NBC New York that the misspelled tickets "are not official tickets to the debate. They were printed at the last minute to create a souvenir for the students. We'll be reprinting them for all those who won tickets." Still, students were not having it:

Don't sweat it, kids — in a few years, those "Hilary" tickets might even be collectibles. Jeva Lange

Green Party candidate Jill Stein was escorted away from Hofstra University ahead of Monday night's presidential debate — the second time in four years that she's had a run-in with the police at a debate hosted on Hofstra's campus.

Stein won't be appearing on the debate stage Monday because she failed to reach 15 percent in the national polls, the minimum requirement for a candidate to be included in the presidential debate. She is polling at around 2.4 percent. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson also failed to reach 15 percent nationally, and will be live tweeting the debate from Twitter's offices in New York City.

Stein, on the other hand, planned to livestream "from a protest outside the debate venue," The Daily Dot reports, only when she turned up, the Nassau County police promptly sent her packing:

It could have been worse: In 2012, Stein spent eight hours handcuffed to a chair at Hofstra University for protesting her exclusion from the debate. Jeva Lange

Data released Monday by the FBI revealed that murders in the United States rose dramatically between 2014 and 2015. After two decades trending downward, the murder rate rose 10.8 percent between 2014 and 2015, the "biggest single-year percentage jump since 1971," The Guardian notes.

The bulk of the increase was due to a jump in the murders of black men, as the data shows at least 900 more black men were killed in 2015 than in 2014. Additionally, 71.5 percent of murders in 2015 were committed with firearms, up from 67.9 percent in 2014.

The increase put the total murders in the U.S. at 15,696, just shy of 2009's number — but still just half of the total in 1991, the peak of the country's violent crime wave. Read more about the FBI's latest data at The Guardian. Kimberly Alters

NASA announced Monday that its Hubble Space Telescope has found more evidence of "water plumes" on the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa. If the plumes, which NASA describes as water vapor "erupting off" Europa's surface, do in fact exist, it would offer scientists hoping to study Europa's massive subsurface ocean a way to study the water without having to drill through miles of hard ice to get there.

Europa's ocean has two times the amount of water Earth's oceans have, making it "one of the most promising places that could potentially harbor life in the solar system," Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a press release.

The latest findings mark the second time NASA has reported spotting water plumes on Europa's surface; in November and December 2012, scientists noticed water vapor near the moon's southern pole. NASA is planning to launch two missions to Europa sometime in the next decade, Ars Technica reported.

For more on the plumes — including what they may look like — watch NASA's video, below. Becca Stanek

Not even Glenn Beck — the conservative radio host who reportedly spent $500,000 on travel stumping for Ted Cruz during the Republican primaries — is ready to let the Texas senator off the hook for endorsing Donald Trump. In an interview on Beck's radio show Monday, Beck repeatedly tried to get Cruz to explain his decision to vote for Trump — despite the fact that during the Republican National Convention, Cruz used his speech to advise Americans to "vote your conscience" rather than to endorse the GOP nominee.

At first Cruz tried to paint his convention speech as a way to "lay out a path to uniting Republicans," explaining that this election is "a binary choice" and Hillary Clinton isn't the choice to make. But Beck wasn't ready to let Cruz get away with once again refusing to say whether Trump is fit to be president. "So a man, who you cannot come on [the show] and say, 'Yes, Glenn, he is fit to be president of the United States,' I still am encouraged by you to abandon my principles and vote [for him] because it's a binary choice?" Beck asked.

By the end of the nearly 20-minute conversation, Beck had to admit he "strongly" disagreed with Cruz — and he was reportedly even more candid after he hung up the phone. "I think I have to apologize, and say, maybe, perhaps, those of you who said Ted Cruz is calculating and a smarmy politician, I think I may have to slightly agree with you and apologize for saying, 'No, he wasn't,'" Beck said, as reported by The Daily Beast. Then, Beck apparently twisted the knife, reportedly admitting that maybe, just maybe, he should've supported Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the primary instead.

Listen to the entire interview, below. Becca Stanek

The weekend's intense rain in the Midwest may finally be subsiding, but in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, floodwaters are continuing to rise. As of Monday morning, the Cedar River crested at 16 feet, which constitutes a "major flood event," Time reported. By Tuesday morning, the river is expected to crest at 23 feet, which NBC News noted would put the water "11 feet above flood stage." The waters are rushing down to Cedar Rapids from Wisconsin, where two people died last week because of flooding.

The last time Iowa waters rose this high was in 2008; that flood, which The Des Moines Register called the "worst in the city's history," resulted in an estimated $10 billion in damages.

Residents of Cedar Rapids and in other areas of Iowa have been advised to evacuate, while curfews have also been installed in some parts of the state. CNN reported Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) have "each declared disaster emergencies for 13 counties, freeing up state resources to respond to the flooding." Becca Stanek

Tonight is a big night for the swath of voters who still haven't decided whether they're team Donald Trump or team Hillary Clinton. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday, the day of the first presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, revealed that of the 50 percent of likely voters who are using the presidential debates to guide their decision this November, 10 percent still don't even prefer one candidate over another.

But for all those voters who are hopeful the debates will bring some much-needed clarity, 39 percent of respondents were already resigned to the fact the debates "will not help" them choose a candidate, Reuters reported. Another 11 percent weren't sure how the debates will shape their decisions.

The debate will be moderated by NBC's Lester Holt at New York's Hofstra University. Reuters reported it is expected to draw "a Super Bowl-sized audience of 100 million Americans."

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted among 1,337 likely voters across all 50 states, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Becca Stanek