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.
