Winning a primary debate isn’t about having the best one-liners or drawing the biggest applause.

For top candidates, it’s an audition for party elites, moneyed supporters and, secondarily, voters. The goal isn’t to wow the crowd or surge in the polls, but to reassure — to confirm their ability to win and handle the presidency. For less serious or low-profile candidates, it’s an opportunity to break out — to cause party elites to reconsider or get voters to coalesce behind them.

And whether they do so depends a lot more on how the news media covers the debates than the performances themselves.

From this point of view, the “winners” and “losers” of the debates can end up looking a lot different than what you see on Twitter. A candidate who gets by without much notice could be a winner; a candidate who gets the most attention might, in doing so, have denied himself the elite support it ultimately takes to win.