Politics

Republican debate 2016 live stream: time, TV schedule, how to watch online

Updated Feb 13, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

Ethan Miller/Getty

Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.

Tonight’s Republican presidential debate will air on CBS. But don’t worry: If you don’t have a TV, you’ll still be able to tune in — an online live stream will be free and available to all at CBSNews.com. The debate will begin at 9 pm Eastern.

All six of the remaining candidates qualified for this debate: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Ben Carson. And they’re all focusing on the next two GOP contests: the February 20 South Carolina primary and the February 23 Nevada caucuses.

Trump will be fresh off his New Hampshire win, having left his disappointing second-place Iowa finish in the rearview mirror and having seemingly proven that his voters will show up to the polls. The prospect of Trump winning the nomination seems more likely now than ever before, and there will surely be some attempts to take him down at tonight’s debate.

Cruz, meanwhile, followed up his Iowa victory with a third-place finish in New Hampshire — which was surprisingly good, since many believed the state to be ill-suited to him. Still, the Texas senator has trailed Trump in every recent South Carolina poll. As a result, he’s started to run ads trashing Trump’s character in the state, in hopes of changing the dynamic.

But Cruz isn’t just focused on Trump — he’s been running ads against Marco Rubio too, hoping to ensure the Florida senator’s decline after the most recent debate is a permanent thing. Meanwhile, Rubio has also taken fire from Jeb Bush’s team, which still sees Rubio as its most dangerous rival for the support of mainstream conservatives.

Then there’s John Kasich, who finished second place in New Hampshire and will be a bit of a wild card tonight. Kasich, who helped push through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in his state, has little hopes of doing well in South Carolina. He’s merely hoping to keep his campaign afloat until states with more moderate Republicans end up voting in March. It’s not clear how he’ll achieve that, so we’ll see what he’s cooked up tonight.