Republican presidential candidates on stage last month in Cleveland.
 
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Will the second debate upset the current GOP standings? Or simply reinforce existing trends?
Polls’ directions since the first debate indicate the night’s fireworks and stumbles didn’t play a big role in changing the direction of the GOP race.  Looking at the Real Clear Politics polling averages following the first debate, you don’t see major changes in direction for most candidates — those going up kept going up, and those going down went down. There was one noticeable exception: Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson saw his numbers rise after the first contest, eventually lifting him from fourth place to second.
Remember the numbers in that chart above are from a poll average, which means it takes a few days to see real shifts in the numbers, and the averaging smooths out large gyrations.
But the dominant trends in the race – the rise of businessman Donald Trump and the decline of establishment candidates, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker – were already well under way before the August event.
Mr. Trump’s numbers softened a bit immediately after the debate, but them resumed their climb. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz saw a small jump.
The small change in the poll numbers is actually somewhat remarkable if you think about that event. The August Fox News debate had a record audience of 24 million viewers and spawned a set of news stories afterward about the feud between Mr. Trump and moderator Megyn Kelly.
Those are high bars for Wednesday night’s debate to beat.
One other important point to consider, before you sit down and watch the debate this evening: the one candidate who seemed to gain most from the first debate, Mr. Carson, was generally not cited in post-debate analysis as a “winner.”
Mr. Carson was also decidedly middle-of-the-pack in his “talk time” during the event.
The takeaway: Don’t necessarily expect big changes in the numbers after Wednesday night and don’t read much into the instant post-game analysis. The American electorate is rarely easy to understand, but this year its workings are particularly opaque.
Dante Chinni writes Politics Counts as a regular Capital Journal feature. Mr. Chinni is the director of the American Communities Project at American University, which examines different types of communities across the U.S.
Video
Jerry Seib: Three Things to Watch For in the GOP Debate
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