By Noah Lieberman

Ballotcraft is a fantasy politics game (think fantasy football, but for politics). Play against your friends and win by best predicting what’s going to happen in upcoming elections. Sign up and play here: www.ballotcraft.com.

Tuesday night’s Republican debate was full of exciting moments and quotes that are sure to repeated on the news for weeks to come. However, for all the excitement, bickering, and crazy moments, the debate was seemingly uninteresting on the Ballotcraft market. Marco Rubio had an astounding lead for the entire night and ended up winning the focus group vote at the end of the night. But there were some major trends behind the numbers, which will surely have an effect on future debates and markets. Here’s a quick look at the stories you should keep in mind for the next debate and beyond:

The story of the night, obviously, was Rubio’s complete domination of the entire field from start to finish. He built upon his great showing from two weeks ago (when he also won) and claimed his third debate crown of the campaign. Our focus group cited his poise and debating skill (specifically in his bout with Rand Paul) and awarded him a victory with 36% of the vote. This pales in comparison to his dominance in the market, where his stock reached record-setting highs of over 70 points. No one has ever done this well in a debate before on the Republican side, and with such a clear cut victory (especially over fellow moderates Jeb Bush and John Kasich) it isn’t hard to imagine Rubio finally moving into the upper echelon of candidates.

The really impressive feature of Rubio’s performance is that he was able to completely shut out all of the other candidates, holding at least a 30-point lead for the entire debate. No other candidate had even held the lead for a whole debate, let alone built on it like he did, ending over 50 points ahead of the next closest competitor. However, one has to wonder if he has hit his ceiling, and will start to pay for it during the next Republican debate. Some of our focus group members mentioned his history of great performances as a reason for why they didn’t think he improved his standing the most. It would seem inevitable that more voters share this viewpoint come next month, when Rubio will surely face a tougher road to gain his fourth victory.

Other than Rubio, the most interesting trend of the night is the general confusion that consumed the four outsider candidates, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump ended up floating around each other on the market for most of the night, as the traders failed to recognize one of them as the clear second choice candidate. This is an interesting break from precedent, since one of these four candidates has risen above the rest in each of the past three debates.

In the final focus group poll, three of these candidates (Cruz, Fiorina, and Carson) received a sizable share of the vote, meaning this inability to select a winner of this faction was widespread. Should this continue in future debates, it might take one of these candidates dropping out or being relegated to the JV debate for the others to have a shot at winning it all.

Be sure to come back later this week for in-depth coverage and preview of the Democratic debate.