A great many people have argued in recent days that Marco Rubio’s strategy—of not attacking Donald Trump, playing for second, and hoping the field gets culled—looks like a political loser. A newly released Florida Quinnipiac poll offers further evidence to support this claim. The poll finds that, among likely Republican voters in Rubio’s home state of Florida, Trump leads Rubio by 16 points—44 to 28 percent. That’s a bigger margin than Trump won by in South Carolina, before Jeb Bush got out of the race.
The Quinnipiac poll is the first poll taken in Florida since voting began in Iowa. The poll was conducted from Sunday through Wednesday, so entirely after Bush’s exit. The Florida primary, a winner-take-all contest, will take place in just 19 days.
Without attacking Trump, damaging him, and reducing his support, Rubio would have to claim almost all of the support that’s currently going to other candidates in order to prevail. To be more exact, of the 28 percent of the vote that the poll finds is now divided between supporters of Ted Cruz (12 percent), John Kasich (7 percent), Ben Carson (4 percent), and those who don’t yet know who they’re supporting (5 percent), Rubio would have to win all but 6 points’ worth of it (22 of the 28 points) to get to 50 percent. So he’d have to claim about 80 percent of the support that’s not already either in his or Trump’s column. Trump, meanwhile, would have to claim just 6 of those 28 points.
This would seem like a longshot play for Rubio even if two other factors weren’t considered: First, Cruz (who has more votes and wins than Rubio to date) and Kasich (who would be competing in his home state of Ohio that same day) presumably aren’t going anywhere before then. Second, the poll finds that 17 percent of likely voters in the Florida Republican primary “would definitely not support” Rubio. That’s almost any many as the 21 percent who say they “would definitely not support” Trump.
If Rubio wants to win the nomination—or even his home state—he’s going to have to start playing for first, not for second.
Update: Another new Florida poll (one not listed by Real Clear Politics) has Trump at 34 percent, Rubio at 27 percent, Cruz at 17 percent, and Kasich and Carson each at 5 percent.
