By Noah Lieberman

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With two debates coming up in the next week, it’d be easy to get overwhelmed by all of the things happening in the political world when forming your Ballotcraft strategy. So to break it down a bit for you, we’ll be looking at the storylines you should be following to succeed on Tuesday night’s Republican debate. We’ll have a candidate-by-candidate analysis for you Tuesday afternoon, but for now, here are the four biggest questions leading up to the Republican debate.

Will Rubio and Fiorina carry momentum?

First off, let’s deal with the only two candidates to walk away with wins in our previous debate games, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. Not only are these two the only competitors to have ever gone the distance, they were also the only two candidates to pull away from the pack in last week’s CNBC debate. The big question you have to consider isn’t whether these two will do well on Tuesday, because it’s pretty obvious that they will. The question is whether, on a less crowded stage with more capable moderators, these two will be able to so quickly and effectively separate themselves from the six other Republicans. The utter chaos of the CNBC debate allowed for Rubio and Fiorina to appear poised and presidential without much effort: Fiorina had to tie her responses only tangentially to the questions asked before embarking on one of her trademark speeches, and Rubio didn’t have to try hard to appear more fit for office than the other establishment candidates, who gave in to the pandemonium of the debate rather than take Rubio on rhetorically. But with new hosts, fewer competitors, and a different format, more will be required to rise to the top and, if Rubio and Fiorina aren’t expecting stiffer competition, that might take some time.

The other thing keeping these two from continuing to plow through the competition is that neither one has seen their poll numbers rise all too dramatically since the last debate (granted, it’s only been a week, but still the four polls released since then have shown almost no change for either candidate). So even though they are impressing the traders and focus groups, they haven’t been resonating with the voters. This could mean they change tactics Tuesday night, or it could mean they receive difficult questions on why they think they are struggling in the polls. Either way, the lack of newfound support cannot make their path to repeating victory any easier.

Currently, Rubio is trading near 50%, a price which will almost certainly come down in the coming days. Fiorina is at a much more reasonably priced 9%, which is probably going to rise up to the mid-teens before she takes the stage in a few days. Given the hurdles these two candidates will face in the debate, I recommend shorting Rubio and putting a small investment in Fiorina until the prices become a bit more stable.

How will the dynamic change with fewer candidates?

One of the biggest changes for the debate Tuesday was announced just two days ago: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will not be joining the other candidates on the primetime debate stage. For the first time, there will be less than 10 Republicans debating together in the main debate, a move which is sure to have some interesting ripple effects in the market. The first assumption you might make is that this is going to give every candidate a boost, and let candidates who have been hurting for time (Senator Paul and Governor Kasich come to mind) get more of a chance to prove their mettle. But this assumes that Fox Business will split the time that would have been taken up by the two governors among all candidates equally, which may not be the case. If Fox instead decides to reward the candidates in the center of stage who are leading the polls, this move may only further consolidate the market to three or four candidates.

Personally, I think Fox will take the hint from the RNC and try to whittle the field down even further in their debate. That means we probably won’t see much more time for low-polling candidates like Kasich and Paul, and those on the cusp like Cruz and Bush will probably see more scrutiny if they do get more time. While I think the prices will even out a bit more before the debate, once they start on Tuesday night you should only invest in the tried and true.

Will Carson and Trump finally live up to their poll numbers?

If Fox is trying to create a clearer picture of which candidates are actually poised to win the nomination, then it stands to reason they’d give a bigger share of the questions to the polling leaders. In this case that means Donald Trump and Ben Carson, the two Republicans whose middling performances in the past three debates have done seemingly nothing to slow their momentum in the polls. Again, the two candidates have relatively high prices compared to their past finishes, with Trump at 17% and Carson at 7%.

Trump comes into the debate having released his latest book “Crippled America” earlier this week. The book detailed many of Trump’s policy positions for the first time and will give the real estate mogul plenty of chances to separate himself from Carson by appearing more fit for the actual job of governing. Carson, on the other hand, comes in after another week of terrible press following the poorly managed Mannatech scandal and awkward statements claiming the pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain. Doubling down on these statements may help Carson hold on to his base, but will likely alienate undecided voters like those in our focus group. However, we have not seen Carson take a more moderate approach in these debates, and a reversal or admission of wrongdoing here could backfire immensely if done improperly. His interviews on the Sunday talk shows this week and his opening statements Tuesday will give you a good idea of how he plans to tackle these issues on the stage.

Will the moderators change course or give us more of the same?

However, none of this matters if the moderators for the Fox Business debate do as poor a job as their CNBC counterparts. The trio of Gerard Baker, Neil Cavuto, and Maria Bartiromo, while better than the untested moderators of last week, still have very little experience in political interviews and even less in moderating debates. Fox News’ debate is unquestionably the best debate of the three we’ve seen, but they had anchors headlining the event who wouldn’t back down from the candidates. Will that strong-willed spirit trickle down to the lesser anchors on Fox’s lesser channel, or will this just be a rerun of the uncontrollable mess we saw on CNBC?

If it’s the former, then this might not be the best time for Fiorina and Carson to be going through scandals due to questionable statements. Megyn Kelly famously called Trump out on his perceived sexism during the first debate, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for one of these moderators to do the same to Carson for the plethora of dubious facts he’s been spreading on the campaign trail. This would also mean we get what we were promised last week: a debate on the economy and business. That would be a big blow to Cruz, Carson, and Paul, who resonate more for their foreign or social policy than fiscal. Meanwhile, Bush would benefit from being able to bring up his strong economic record as governor of Florida.

If the latter holds more true, and candidates talk over each other (or the moderators) without any semblance of punishment again, expect results similar to last time. Rubio will once again become the establishment candidate of choice while Fiorina leads the outsiders with her strong oratorical skills. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it’d be pretty predictable.