i
NPR will track how much air time each of the candidates get in Tuesday night’s debate.
Patrick Sison/AP
hide caption
itoggle caption
Patrick Sison/AP
NPR will track how much air time each of the candidates get in Tuesday night’s debate.
Patrick Sison/AP
This post was updated at 11:00 p.m. ET
With only five candidates on stage Tuesday night, the presidential candidates had plenty of time to speak compared with the more crowded GOP debates — but it wasn’t equal time.
During the two-hour-long debate, each candidate was to have one minute to answer a direct question. If the candidate is brought up in someone else’s answer, he or she had 30 seconds for rebuttal. Those were the rules, but in reality moderator Anderson Cooper had discretion to allow more time for an answer, and had said said he’s not afraid to go after any statements that don’t ring true.
NPR ran its stopwatch Tuesday to track which candidate spoke the longest (as we did for the last debate, during which Trump spoke the longest by far).
Bernie Sanders had a slight lead over Hillary Clinton after the first break, but then Clinton moved ahead. Lincoln Chafee trailed for most of the debate — he didn’t speak at all between the second and third breaks. Here is the final tally of how much air time each candidate received:
Clinton: 30 min 25 sec
Sanders: 27 min 41 sec
O’Malley: 17 min 08 sec
Webb: 15 min 20 sec
Chafee: 9 min 05 sec