Frank Luntz's respected focus group polling deemed Marco Rubio the winner of Thursday night's debate, but it was a different story online. While such surveys have a tendency to be highly unscientific and only roughly accurate, they are a great gauge of the general temperature of how a candidate went over. Rather unsurprisingly at this point, Donald Trump was a big hit.
In a Drudge Report survey of more than 120,000 people, 63.8 percent of respondents named Trump the winner. Ted Cruz trailed at 17.9 percent, Marco Rubio at 12.8 percent, John Kasich at 3.6 percent, and why-is-he-still-running Ben Carson came in with 2 percent.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The best historical fiction of 2025The Week Recommends Let these compelling tales whisk you away to another century
-
Taz Sarhane's mallard with pine nut sauce and boulangère potatoesThe Week Recommends Bold duck, crispy potatoes and silky pine-nut sauce come together in this earthy yet refined dish
-
Cambodian pork and rice recipeThe Week Recommends This street-food dish is traditionally eaten for breakfast, but makes a delicious dinner, too
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff ideaspeed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'
-
Trump is not sure he must follow the Constitutionspeed read When asked about due process for migrants in a TV interview, President Trump said he didn't know whether he had to uphold the Fifth Amendment
-
Trump judge bars deportations under 1798 lawspeed read A Trump appointee has ruled that the president's use of a wartime act for deportations is illegal
-
Trump ousts Waltz as NSA, taps him for UN rolespeed read President Donald Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
-
Trump blames Biden for tariffs-linked contractionspeed read The US economy shrank 0.3% in the first three months of 2025, the Commerce Department reported
-
Trump says he could bring back Ábrego García but won'tSpeed Read At a rally to mark his 100th day in office, the president doubled down on his unpopular immigration and economic policies
-
Canada's Liberals, Carney win national electionSpeed Read The party of Prime Minister Mark Carney beat Conservative Pierre Poilievre thanks in part to Trump's trade war
