Sen. Marco Rubio’s essentially aspirational and biographical campaign for the presidency is not playing well with home state voters, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll. Three months ago, Rubio and Bush were tied 31 to 30 percent among registered GOP voters..
But now, Bush support remains essentially unchanged at 28 percent (within the margin of error), while Rubio’s has faded to 16 percent, barely ahead of a surging Scott Walker.
Trump is fourth at 11 percent, well below his national averages. Either Floridians don’t like fighting billionaires, or they don’t like angry billionaires who deferred military service yet imply prisoners of wars are losers for getting caught. (This is the first Florida poll taken entirely after Trump’s McCain remarks.)
Meanwhile, a Miami Herald poll of Miami-Dade County Republicans found Rubio trailing Bush overall 25 percent to 35 percent. But among Cuban Americans, Bush takes an even stronger lead, 43 to 31 percent, and among Hispanic voters overall leads 40 to 30 percent. Biography is not destiny with Latino voters, clearly.
Rubio is everybody’s second favorite candidate. But he has yet to come up with a compelling case why he should be number one. A feel good biography is not enough.
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at American Principles in Action.
