The Republican chattering class lurrrrves Marco Rubio, and Rubio’s always excellent onstage (never more so than last night), so there was a moment around halfway through the debate last night when my Twitter feed was filled with people proclaiming “RUBIO IS THE NOMINEE.” To which I replied, only half-jokingly, that the way these debates have gone so far, Rubio will gain a point and Trump and/or Carson will bounce out to an even bigger lead for no particular reason whatsoever.

How’s that half-joke working out today?

As for the winners and losers in Wednesday night’s debate, over 1,500 registered Republicans were asked, “Who do you think won the debate?” Republicans across the United States pick Donald Trump as the winner with 26.7 percent of the vote followed by Senator Marco Rubio, taking second place, at 21.1 percent. Senator Ted Cruz finishes in third place with 17.3 percent of the vote.

When asked, “Who to you think lost the debate?” polled voters put former Governor Jeb Bush on top with 26.2 percent of the vote, closely followed by Senator Rand Paul at 24.2%.   John Kasich received 15.0 percent of the responses.

If you’re a Trump naysayer, the spin here is obvious: Trump not only has the biggest fan base in the field (for now), his fans are more passionate than anyone else’s. He could have knocked over a podium, answered every question with a belch, and the 27 percent who are supporting him would still say he won. Okay, but do note that this same poll showed Carly Fiorina winning the second debate back in September, 12 points ahead of Trump. If Trump always wins because his fans insist upon it, how do you explain that result? Is it a simple matter of Fiorina being the obvious winner last time and collecting more of the anti-Trump viewers, whereas Rubio and Cruz each had a case for being the standout last night and split the anti-Trump viewers between them? Or is it that Trump really did win despite seeming to disappear onstage for long stretches?

Here’s how things shake out when these same respondents were asked who their first choice is for the nomination:

Fiorina’s performance in September was such a showstopper, she actually tied Trump at 22 percent for first overall in the overnight poll. There’s nothing like that happening here with Rubio and Cruz, although both did score particularly well when people were asked whether the debate made them more favorable or less favorable to each candidate. Rubio split 64/16 on that while Cruz split 62/16; Trump and Carson, at 50/23 and 51/20, respectively, both did well but not quite as well. It’s also true that Gravis, which conducted this poll, has tended in the past to show Trump doing a bit better (i.e. in the low to mid-30s) than most other polls do. (That may be because this is a poll of registered, not likely, Republican voters.) But interestingly, Rubio’s showed no improvement between this survey and the last post-debate survey conducted by Gravis: He hit 15 percent after the second GOP debate and he’s at 14.5 percent today, good for third place in both but only a distant third. Then again, he was at 11 percent in a Gravis poll conducted earlier this week, so there’s reason to think he did improve overnight — after falling off a bit between the last two debates.

Here’s the debate winner reassuring Becky Quick that he never called Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator” for wanting to increase the number of H-1B visas awarded to foreign citizens even though it’s … right there on his campaign website. Various critics, both left and right, noted last night that this isn’t the first time Trump has said something that seems to conflict with his own campaign position paper on immigration. Last night he said about H-1B visas, “I’m in favor of people coming into this country legally… As far as Mark [Zuckerberg] is concerned, as far as the visas are concerned, if we need people, they have — it’s fine.” But the campaign website slams the idea of letting businesses bring in foreign workers with H-1Bs for jobs that Americans could be doing, especially for low-paying entry-level jobs. James Antle’s also correct that Trump’s most famous spoken pronouncement of the campaign so far, his call to deport 11 million illegals, doesn’t actually appear in the position paper. Deportation is mentioned just once, in reference to illegals who are members of gangs. Nor does Trump’s more recent idea of readmitting many illegals legally once they’ve been deported, provided that they’re “good” (i.e. without a criminal record), turn up. All of which is to say, Trump’s position on immigration seems to be, er, in flux. I wonder if the more competent moderators at Fox Business will bring that up at the fourth debate next month.