Talk Elections

If he had been the GOP nominee, Rubio would have outperformed Trump with college whites but underperformed with working class whites. Rubio could have won NH, VA, MN, CO, NV. He would have kept OH and IA, albeit his margin would have been smaller than Trump's. PA is a wild card; Rubio would have crushed it in the philly suburbs by winning Bucks and Chester counties but would have fallen behind Trump in the working class areas. He almost certainly would have lost MI and WI.

This is how I imagine a Rubio victory:
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New Hampshire and Virginia are the only ones he would have flipped. I think stuff like the Access Hollywood tape cost Trump NH. Rubio clearly would have been disciplined enough to win there. Virginia would have been the tipping point state with a thin MOV for Rubio. A lot of the NOVA transients are Lean D but I think he could have done exceedingly well to overcome this. Since NOVA is usually the last part of the state to dump votes this (and Pennsylvania) keeps America up all night.

Colorado and Nevada would have been possible but I don't think he would have flipped it.

Hillary got the margins she needed in Philadelphia. Rubio would have undoubtedly did better than Trump in the suburbs but I don't think Hillary would have bled as much support as she did in Western PA, Luzerne, and Lackawanna with Rubio as her opponent. She wins PA by the same margin Trump did.

Hillary would have still had depressed turnout in Milwaukee and Detroit, but Rubio would not have mobilized the rural whites here like Trump did. Obama fatigue, Clinton scandals, and the state's shift to the right still keeps it too close for comfort. She wins Wisconsin by less than 1 percent and Michigan by 1.5.

I doubt he wins Virginia though he could very likely win back New Hampshire.

Nevada and Colorado

He'd have lost Pennsylvania and Michigan though.

Trump won WI.

...Whoops, brain fart.

I keep looking at the map like it's all still going on sometimes.

Anyway, Rubio gains in the West, keeps Trump's Wisconsin, but wins more on a Pat Tumor or Ron Johnson esque strategy.

He does worse in New Hampshire, and barely loses Virginia

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Loses WI, and ME-02; gains VA, NH, CO, NV, and NPV.

Rubio is not flipping MI. I say he flips both WI and MN.

In fact, I see MI voting to the left of NM.

Honestly i don't see him winning any Hilary states, although maybe a coin toss with NH.

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MN was only close because of Trump. Trump actually did quite well in Nevada, OTOH Rubio will do better with Hispanics. NH maybe, though he could lose it with less WWC support than Trump. VA is possible, a very winnable state for Rubio, though it partially depends on Hillary's VP pick. CO was the tipping-point state in 2012 and Rubio will do well with college-educated whites and Hispanics so he would win it. PA was tied for the tipping-point state, if Rubio does well enough in the suburbs he can win it. MI is lost. WI is tough but perhaps if Hillary goes down in a bigger loss he can take it.

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If Romney couldn't win Virginia in 2012, I don't think Rubio would've been able to either. NoVa was probably going to trend Democratic regardless of who the Republican nominee was.

Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia.

Rubio would have won every state trump won.


Why would a white rural person vote for trump vs hillary, but vote for hillary vs rubio?

they would not vote for hillary but many would stay at home rather than vote for rubio

Romney lost VA by 3.9% to a very popular incumbent President. Romney's social conservatism didn't play too well in NOVA either. He lost Fairfax County by 20.5% and traditional GOP stronghold Loudoun County by 5.5%. Rubio would have won Loudoun outright and lost Fairfax by 10-15%, which should be enough to carry the state. Keep in mind that in 2004 Bush won VA by 8.2% despite losing Fairfax by 7.2%.

Rubio resonates well in NOVA. He won that region handily against Trump in the GOP primary and his latino background, life story, youth, charisma, and pro-business policies are very much in line with NOVA.

It's about turnout and margin. The white working class had a massive turnout, and Trump won them by a whopping 39 points, a bigger margin than even Reagan 1984.

Rubio would have easily won the national popular vote as well by losing CA by 15-20% instead of Trump's 30, losing IL by 10-15%, and winning TX by around 15%, GA by 8-10%, FL by 4-6%.

Maybe NH, MN, NV.

CO or VA? No.

I'm doubtful Rubio would have won ME-2 or at least done as well there as it was the kind of district Romney lost by a  little ND Trump picked up with the Obama-Trump voters.

Rubio was consistently tied in FL polling from day 1 vs. Hillary, while he was always up ~7 on murphy:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_rubio_vs_clinton-3553.html

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/senate/fl/florida_senate_rubio_vs_murphy-5222.html

Senate race =/ presidential.

Rubio is more socially conservative than romney & the only reason why rubio did better than expected in VA primary was due to government worker Dem voters in Fairfax crossing over to vote for him to 'stop Trump', he doesn't necessarily have appeal in that region, they just wanted to 'Stop Trump'. This was widely reported in contemporary news stories.

Trump won every other VA county by 10%+ meeting the polling average, only reason Fairfax numbers were off was due to the dem crossovers. There were articles like this in the atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/why-liberals-should-vote-for-marco-rubio/471444/

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http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/clinton-trump-win-virginia-overall-rubio-wins-in-fairfax-county/article_4412522c-e031-11e5-88c2-6bdb7adf8580.html

Dukakis also was an immigrant with a life story, youth and 'charisma', how did he do?

More links on the D government workers in Fairfax and their strategic voting pattern:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/01/liberals-explain-why-theyre-strategically-voting-as-republicans/

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Virginia-Election-Results-370707361.html

Hillary led Trump in Florida and nationwide by a large margin during the campaign but because she was very unpopular and ran a terrible campaign(not because Trump was popular!), she lost Florida and the election.

Trump won more raw votes than Toomey, would turnout have been the same in PA?

Of course, part of the reason for D weakness in Upper Midwest may have been due to Hillary's lack of campaigning in those states. Hillary campaigned aggressively in SW + Georgia and was able to improve the margins in those states, she left out the Midwest by taking it for granted vs. Trump. It is important to consider the context, the Obama coalition held everywhere, except for the Midwest.

The type of campaign Jeb/Rubio were running was identical to the type of campaign Hillary ran during the GE. They were going to dodge the base to focus on courting suburban democrats with platitudes as Hillary did with suburban republicans.

They shared many of the same weaknesses as Hillary (though she originally wanted to run an Obama 2012 type strategy but changed her mind due to Trump).

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_trump_vs_clinton-5635.html

If you look at the FL numbers for Trump v. Clinton back in 2015, they were in a tight margin, there were regular periods of volatility during the election season overall which habitually reverted to that tight margin.

I looked at the numbers for MN(RCP average) and Rubio was up by 4% there so now I think he'd actually win it.

To recap, he was statistically tied in his home state while being up +4 in MN, Carson was also +2 in MN.

Rubio vs Clinton-Rubio win scenario
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Marco Rubio/Nikki Haley-Republican: 321 EV 50.01%
Hillary Clinton/Tom Vilsack-Democratic: 217 EV 46.19%​

Flawless Beautiful Marco <3 <3 <3 would have won all fifty states and D.C. in a flawless, beautiful victory!

Rubio would have won Florida in the end though especially since he'd likely run a better campaign than Clinton. He could run on change(bit like Obama) and portray Clinton as basically a Washington insider with too much baggage. He would be disciplined and not be the most unpopular major party nominee in history.

Atlas wisdom: Trump won so he was obviously most electable candidate-DUH! Clinton was VERY STRONG candidate-only Trump could beat her, never mind -14% favorability?! Muh WWC populism, WWC only demographic that matters.

His campaign was identical to Clinton's if not slightly more disorganized. Obama would be running the counterargument likening rubio to Mccain and arguing him to be 'more of the same'. Obama had significant policy arguments for his 'change', people were upset with Bush's foreign policy, and Obama ran against the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, which rubio fundamentally embodies.

Yet, despite that, Obama only barely defeated Clinton. The '08 dem primary was closer than the 2016 election.

Cruz was running on the 'change' 'anti-washington cartel' card on the GOP side.

You know who was incredibly disciplined and used rehearsed messages to the T (& regularly changed views based on polling recommendations) and was nicknamed the 'Little man'? Thomas Dewey.


Rubio lost Latinos overall to Murphy in his senate race. Lost non-Cuban Latinos by standard GOP margins.

Ted Cruz's favorables were actually originally nearer to Rubio's, his numbers didn't collapse until early May due to an intense campaign against Trump. Cruz & Rubio had their favorable numbers generally move in tandem, until Rubio dropped out.

2016 was a change election, not a natural Democratic win. Rubio would have been able to run on that, and he wasn't identical to Clinton. Even if he was identical to Clinton, he'd win because his favorables were higher than hers while Trump's were lower. 8 years after Bush people wouldn't believe Obama's argument, especially since Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic candidate. It would be a charismatic(the media would certainly portray him as such) young Senator against the epitome of the DC establishment, Hillary Clinton. Rubio would also be able to avoid the constant gaffes and scandals that dogged Trump. Yes, he'd lose Hispanics, but he'd do better with them than Trump, and also do better with college-educated whites and many demographics. After all, if losing the popular vote by 2% is really the best the GOP can do, they don't have a bright future.

When you have black turnout going down by default [by virtue of Obama not being there] and it was at impossibly high margin to achieve from the start, and favorables tank by the very nature of campaigning [unless you've got bad favorables from the start like Trump], yeah, that's pretty sound wisdom. Perfect? No, but pretty sound.

And yeah, the rest of the GOP field were somehow even less genuine sounding than her, every last one of them but Trump, why do you think they name dropped her so much in the debates while Trump didn't really?  And that's why they got clobbered, while she managed to win [at the cost of everyone but Hassan and Duckworth...but she probably brought McGutless much closer than she had any right to get with her campaign]...only stopped by a technicality.

You mean the best the GOP can do? Rubio's candidacy was modeled on the incumbent Bush '04 campaign, except more conservative, and the best the GOP could do in '04 (despite post-9/11 national security argument) was win a similar margin to Trump in the rustbelt/OH.

What happened to Michael Dukakis & Thomas Dewey?

Everyone hated Bush Sr, and thought he was a corrupt kleptocratic elitist.

As I mentioned with regards to Cruz, both Cruz & Rubio had their favorables moving down, Rubio dropped out, but they were on a similar trajectory, the bottom only fell out for Cruz after a vicious confrontation with Trump towards the end.

Hillary Clinton's favorability numbers were not normal. Rubio's were higher than hers even at the end and he got battered by Trump too, and most likely he'd have managed to lift his once he got out of the primary.

Why do you assume that?
Cruz/Rubio voters were GOP regulars. Trump's voters tended to be R-leaners/independents with no loyalties to the GOP. If Trump told them the primary was 'rigged by the establishment', why would they be motivated to turnout?

Kasich is an interesting alternative argument because he was the only other GOP candidate to win a significant number of independents. Kasich may have had an alternative coalition based on those voters.

NV CO VA but he loses PA and MI

Rubio and Clinton were tied in PA.

P.S. Rubio probably would've shifted the map back to 2012 and put the weight on Colorado as I expect most people expected to be the tipping point.

If I'm charitable, he could've done it and Nevada [and I was originally].

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he keeps the Trump state of Wisconsin [which only he, Trump, and Kasich would have ANY hope taking].

But really, he would've tried ad-bombing, and tried swiftboating, but Hillary clearly isn't a slouch at that and she clearly had ground game down [only Trump's free media blitz was a good counter]...it'd be 1988 all over again. [I bet Deb Ross, Jason Kander, McGinty, and Feingold would've been aided by this]

Same undercurrent for change but with insiderism technically dominant and a popular administration able to give enough lift for Term III.

^By the way, about the 'battering', it didn't really get that bad for Cruz, if you check out the contemporary time frame in March, Cruz & Rubio's numbers were moving in tandem. Cruz's numbers only collapsed after Trump tipped the scale and started getting even more vicious against Cruz & his family in Apr/Early May.

Rubio would also have gotten a lot more from GOP donors. I believe the Koch brothers were going to spend $750 million on the race before Trump. So Hillary's fundraising advantage was primarily due to Trump being inept in that area. And negative campaigning is more effective when done by Republicans, so the GOP would get their base out and depress Democratic turnout.

Rubio's favorability was -4% according to RCP and without Trump would probably be virtually even and then go positive after the primary. It was much higher than Clinton's and Rubio would be able to keep Clinton's down with a focused negative campaign against her. Cruz's unfavorables were much higher and more voters were decided on him-they disliked him-so at best for him it would be a slightly stronger version of Trump against Clinton(maybe he'd be tied with Clinton instead of even less popular than her).

So rubio runs a strategy without specifically courting the base a la Hillary & his attempts to get the base out about benghazi the way dukakis got the base out by shouting about iran-contra?

Meanwhile, Rubio goes out of the way to advertise the TPP, suggests even more free trade should be implemented and goes out of the way to suggest Iran needs regime change a la Mccain '08, and that's supposed to make Democrats apathetic?

Benghazi had 0 impact on the 2012 election, argument could be made that Trump's lack of direct funding was supplemented by his support from Russia.

Rubio led in Colorado and he would have led a GOP that is a better fit for Colorado than Romney, not a worse fit. As it was the tipping-point state in 2012 if he wins it would flip. Nevada I'm not sure because Trump did well there. Virginia is possibly a Clinton win but wouldn't be solid D and Rubio would do well in NOVA and would do well with college-educated whites so it could flip.

It's almost as if avoiding attacks on the frontrunner out of fear of being attacked allows you to keep your favorables up, what happens when you finally start attacking?

https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/ted-cruz-favorable-rating

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/marco-rubio-favorable-rating

In this scenario-does Trump run? Is Rubio nominated from a brokered convention? Does he beat Trump in a close primary battle? Or does Rubio do well in the early states and steamroll his way to victory with opposition rolling over soon after? That would have an impact.

Considering the context in that Rubio got steamrolled in his home state, it's hard to imagine rubio getting the nomination in any scenario other than a brokered convention with or without Trump.

This idea that Trump wasn't SIGNIFICANTLY weaker than Generic R is ridiculous (and Rubio does better than Generic R).  I say he only loses California, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, and DC.  New York and Rhode Island are very close either way.

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Rubio/Haley: 411 EV, 55.4% PV

Clinton/Kaine: 127 EV, 43.3% PV

^It would actually be entirely logically consistent if one goes by the premise that Trump is 'such a weak candidate' that Jeb Bush wins FL without Trump in the race.

If, after all, Trump is so weak and only won due to 'free media',why wouldn't Jeb be able to do it? He had all the money to spend in media dollars, Trump only didn't need to do that due to his free media. Trump was basically a tabloid sub-genre story for the media, without Trump they would have gone back to missing planes and the usual routine.

Lmao this map is pure fantasy. Rubio is and was an empty suit.

I don't see him winning any, but there's a decent chance he could've won NH/NV/MN.

None.

Let's just accept Trump was the GOP's best option in 2016 to win for a number of reasons.

He would've had a better shot to win Nevada and Colorado. Would also outperform Trump in both Arizona and New Mexico. I think it would've looked similar to the Bush 2004 map, minus New Mexico.

Possibly Virginia, but I think Rubio would have struggled badly in the debates and wouldn't have done much (if at all) better than Trump on net.

He would have done much better than Trump, who was crushed in the debates by Clinton.

Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado

Loses Michigan, wins Iowa and Ohio by much smaller margins.

How substantive were those debates?

What kind of issues do you think a normal republican would have discussed? They would've discussed privatizing SS/Medicare, praising Free Trade reforms even more aggressive than the TPP, and in Rubio's case, he would have made a specific argument for regime in Iran while also discussing his failure to deal with immigration while simultaneously being forced to defend the same GOP Congress that blocked his bill? He would've used the same anecdotes over and over again, so you would be able to anticipate his statements well in advance.

Or how about the fact that his tax plan would cut tax rates for Romney & The Koch Brothers to zero (his plan called for 0 capital gains/dividends taxes)? All of these policies are supposed to make Democrats apathetic?

If you believe fundamentally the US is a far-right country, then sure, it would be logical to believe that platform is electable, but otherwise, he was running the most radical conservative campaign policy-wise since Goldwater, he wasn't that different from Cruz in policy.

But the idea that you can elect someone with those policies and then expect a 'Liberal Progressive' wave to take place in 2020 or 2024 is a bit of a joke. Contrasts like that don't happen in terms of how electoral coalitions evolve. Both Hoover and Carter actually adopted many reformist principles their own parties opposed. Bush in 2000 fundamentally ran a centrist-y Kasich style campaign.

Let's put it this way, Sanders-ism would've died even before it even remotely would have had a plausible chance.

^I can't stress this point enough. You can't go from a platform advocating for 0% taxes on the Koch Brothers' earnings to a platform advocating for 70% in the next term. That's not how it works.

These assumptions can only work if you assume Dems moving to the right, which moderate Dems would've had to be if they were willing to elect someone with such sharp right-wing policies to begin with.

Why would Rubio win New Hampshire?

I agree with this.  I think Rubio had an outside chance at Nevada, too.  For fun, I think Kasich could have pulled this map against Clinton:

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Optimistic, but I think Hillary was a prettyyyyyyy bad candidate, and Kasich was a good one.

I think Kasich also gets VA by 1%.  He would do better than Romney in Fairfax.

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Rubio or Pence should be the 2020 nominee (This is a rubio map not a pence map)

Most likely, none. Possibly Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire. Rubio almost certainly would not have replicated Trump's success across the Midwest and PA.

People here are acting like Rubio would do better because he's a "moderate" but that is a dubious assertion. Rubio is a Koch brothers guy through and through on every economic issue. Trump held strong capitalist views as well, but he mixed in populism with a willingness to get the government more involved in infrastructure and protecting fighting outsourcing. Rubio supports an outright ban on abortion WITH NO EXCEPTIONS, a position that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject. Especially running against a woman, that would have been a recipe for disaster. According to every exit poll, Trump had his best performance among voters who listed immigration as their top concern. Rubio would not have gotten that. If anything, his gang of 8 amnesty bill (written in his first term after he swore he was against amnesty in 2010), would have dampened conservative and right wing populist turnout for him.

I think the most realistic Rubio vs Clinton race sees him winning all of the Romney states + Florida.

Rubio is certainly more conservative than Trump, no doubt. But likability matters, and he had it in spades. All the head-to-head polls showed Rubio beating Hillary. Rubio would have done better than Trump with latinos and college whites. Hillary lost because she could not turn out the Obama coalition. Trump received fewer votes in WI than Romney, fewer votes in MI and OH than Bush 04.

That would be true if we assume Rubio's likability wouldn't have taken a hit if he was the target of an all out media onslaught for months leading up to the general election. They were happy to give him favorable coverage when he was attacking Trump. It would not have lasted. Especially on social issues.
Rubio also loses his charm under pressure (ex: robotically repeating the same talking point three times when Christie attacked him in the debate before the NH primary). He's a very good speaker, but only when scripted. Perhaps that would have been enough against Clinton, who was also scripted, but it's hard for me to say the guy who only won one county in his home state's primary would be a slam dunk in the general, regardless of hypothetical polling.

Rubio would do better because he was a candidate not crippled by scandal and hated by the majority of the US electorate.

Literally all Rubio would have to do to win comfortably is say "emails" every 15 seconds and unlike with Trump Clinton would have no counter.

Rubio would figure out a way to flub it, at least Trump could be like "well at least I admit it".

Same way Dukakis somehow didn't manage to beat H.W. by bashing Iran-Contra over the head.

except Iran-Contra was resolved by mid 1987 (at least when it came to whether HW was involved in it or not) while the Email Scandal dragged on till July of election year.

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I don't think Rubio would have won WI and ME02 because he would have been weaker than Trump with working class whites but agree with the rest of it. I think Rubio could have won MN by doing well in the twin cities and the suburbs.

No doubt that Rubio would have won the national popular vote as well.

Bush Sr. wasn't personally cleared by the Independent Counsel of anything.

There were rumors in Israel that Amiram Nir had confided in Bush Sr, Nir died in late November 1988.


Oliver North was literally indicted in the July of 1988:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/21/us/civil-liberties-union-asks-court-to-quash-iran-contra-indictment.html

The Independent Counsel pertaining to Iran-Contra continued to exist right up until mid-1993.

Multiple actors continued to be indicted right up until the end of 1992. The Independent Counsel issued its final report in mid-1993.

Lawrence Walsh was in charge of the investigation and indicted Caspar Weinberger right before Bush Sr. left office.

Go look back at the context of the purported polling r.e. favorables:

^To add the above point, Dukakis quite literally was up over Bush Sr. by double digits in early polling and had a net favorables margin of 67-10.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/05/27/dukakis-takes-early-lead-over-bush/0ed5eed4-7b0e-44e4-8c13-6adff6603e82/

Favorability numbers are not fixed, they change over the course of campaigning. Being disliked is generally just an indictator of how well-known you are.

Obama was more ostensibly disliked than Mccain and Romney. Same goes for GWB v. Kerry & even Reagan vs. Carter & Mondale.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-most-hated-candidate-usually-wins/article/2590520


This article is also actually from December 18, 1987:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145687,00.html

"Dukakis and Paul Simon are the only two with relatively low negatives"

Dukakis had amongst the lowest unfavorables in the entire Democratic field in terms of early favorables.

Uti has some weird hatred of Marco Rubio, especially when someone points out Rubio would win Pennsylvania.

You give could give or take Nevada.

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I don't hate him, I've said before, he would do well against a Tim Kaine style democrat, just not someone who is aggressive. His whole candidacy is structured on assuming an easy-going ideological back and forth of talking points, he does not do well in dynamic engagements. For example, Clinton or Biden would've played off the differences between Mexicans and Cubans to start with (the conservative media would call it 'race baiting', but it would work) to damage his Latino outreach strategy.

Because I'm telling you PA does not like Bush-style conservatism. PA is a northeastern state at its electoral core, Trump was only able to win through Appalachia. The only way a normal republican takes PA is by moderating on social issues, and rubio was to the right of Trump on those social issues.

For people who bring up the Senate race, as I've explained before, Santorum won his PA senate race in 2000 easily, while Gore easily carried the state.

My primary point of contention is with people who say Rubio/Cruz are dramatically different electorally. Rubio/Cruz have almost the same positions, what's the difference besides some superficial attributes? It doesn't work if you look at the historical record.

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These traits like youth are not advantages in and of themselves, they are double edged swords (see Reagan, etc.), Clinton or Biden would mock his youth and liken him to an insecure child. So, the superficial facade of his candidacy would be broken, what would he do following that?

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He doesn't have any actual moderating policies of note when you look beyond the superficialities.
His policies for the most part are the same as Cruz, so electorally he'd functionally end up as equivalent to Cruz following the facade breaking down.

People mock Clinton for 'not having a message', but Bush Sr. didn't either, electoral coalition of the incumbency is the message by default.  What was the fundamental raison d'etre behind rubio's candidacy? He didn't have one, other than the fact that it was 'my party's turn', and 'my electoral coalition and views are better than yours', very Dukakis/Dewey-esque. For Bush it was about his 'faith', and he was the first major presidential candidate to actually offer concessions to the Religious Right and he also offered moderates policy concessions. For Reagan/Nixon/Kasich it was about conservatism with a Realpolitik bent (Reagan supported Gun Control as CA gov, he was one of the first governors in the country to legalize abortion, as president he banned machine guns, supported the brady bill, he used people like Manafort as intermediaries to open dialogues with dictators, etc.).


Rubio's Message was literally PNAC, meanwhile Clinton ran her campaign courting neocons was called 'a warmonger who would start WW3'. Let me get this straight, the Jeb/Rubio message was defeated in the election through Clinton, but that is somehow supposed to speak to the strength of that message? Clinton up against a normal republican would have literally been attacked for 'not wanting to start WW3 enough' instead.

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Republicans who like Rubio generally assume an incredibly shallow and banal notion that Obama won because he was black and well-spoken (while curiously ignoring the exact nature of Obama's content in those speeches). (https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/marco-rubio-is-not-barack-obama-c98fda217e86) This is objectively false. If anything, Obama's coalition was a trade-off (compare the Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Clinton '08 polling numbers in the Deep South to Obama's, compare what happened to the Blue Dogs & Southern Democrats in statewide races), but he was able to win primarily due to keeping the far-left in line by playing off against economically unpopular GOP positions (Bush was smart enough to moderate on that front to improve his margins a bit, but Christie & Kasich where the only candidates following in his footsteps on the economic front). It was the Far-Left/Bernie vote that elevated Obama in '08. had Obama's campaign in '08 been like Rubio's, 'vote for me i'm black and well-spoken but I support the same policies as Hillary(Jeb)', he would've easily lost, Obama won by reaching out to the far-left (slamming the establishment Foreign policy consensus, and attacking Free Trade, Wall street, etc.).

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In contrast, if you look at the primary issue republicans care about, immigration, rubio literally did the equivalent of voting for the Iraq War. The GOP coalition is also more electorally precarious. Bush barely won 2 elections, Obama won both of his elections with ease, leaving more room for margin of error for Clinton.

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If there was any candidate comparable to Obama based on campaign style it was Cruz.

Cruz was at least going all in on the base. The only reason why you'd assume Cruz to be unelectable vs. Rubio is if you fundamentally assume GOP policies to be unelectable at face value. Jeb & Rubio had similar strategies of flipping off the base, while superficially trying to court suburban Democrats (the people who love Clintonism and vote D for social reasons are not flipping for someone socially to the right of GWB). That approach would've been identical to the GOP courtship strategy Clinton specifically deployed against Trump, she changed her entire original Obama-2012-style strategy (https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/how-a-decision-in-may-changed-the-general-election) to mimic a Jeb/Rubio style campaign in reverse against Trump.


Also, here is the most amusing fact, Center-Leftists loved Clinton, the Democrats who hated her were Far-Leftists, who didn't believe she was left-wing enough, so they disliked Clinton for being a Wall Street/TPP-loving warmonger and they're supposed to vote for a right-wing republican who would attack Clinton for not wanting regime change in Iran and for not supporting free trade/wall street capital gains/dividends hard enough?

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In conclusion I suspect someone might comment about how the ideas don't matter (despite the similar policy platforms of rubio and cruz), and it's all about the messenger (the argument being that Rubio is a 'better messenger' than Cruz), but here is the exact problem with that analysis:

They entire Jeb/Rubio strategy was predicated on trying to win over those very same suburban democrats who loved the Clinton years in the first place, so again, what incentive would they have to cross over? Let me get this straight, you think you can just call Clinton 'old', and literally manipulate the most educated suburban voters with simplistic slogans and memorized speeches? These voters you are talking about are quite literally the voters most likely to pay attention to policy details and look beyond slogans.

In 2000, Bush was able to barely peel off Clinton's coalition by moderating with compassionate conservatism, which was Kasich's platform.

Then, of course, there's also another school of thought that suggests 'any republican would've beaten Clinton', that camp is at least more respectable and intellectually consistent compared to the 'Cruz would lose bigly, but someone who has his near exact positions would win bigly' - but that logic in and of itself demonstrates the paradox of Rubio's candidacy, if you're an anti-Trump republican and anyone could've beaten Clinton, your focus should've been to support the Republican closest to Trump and who would therefore have the best odds of beating him in the primary, meaning Cruz...

I don't buy that Rubio was a stronger candidate than Trump. He is an empty suit.

Good posts uti. I agree, although it is worth noting that Obama's big win in 2008 wasn't just because he fired up his base. Polls were close until Lehman Bros went under. That election could have been won by almost any democrat given Bush's unpopularity. Obama ran a good campaign in the more competitive environment of 2012. He presented a vision and Romney didn't have one.

A very good analysis, I agree

all of them, Rubio wins all 50 states + DC

Virginia. Maybe Colorado. I think Virginia would have been a Lean R state in this case.

But he would have done worse in PA, MI, and WI, probably enough to lose all three.

But Colorado and Virginia would have been enough.

Wisconsin would not have been a goner, as Johnson put together a slightly different coalition than Trump to win. Johnson and Rubio would have run in tandem. The same might have occurred in PA with Toomey and Rubio.

In addition mcMullin would not have run and Rubio would have gotten at least 2,000,000 of Johnson’s voters. He would have won NH.  ME, MI, AND MN would gone to him.

No Republican not named Donald Trump would have beaten Clinton, the best they would have done is repeat the 2012 map. Even NH, VI and MN were close races. Funny enough plenty of Democrats would have beaten Trump.

Minnesota, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and New Hampshire

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I'm going to say that Rubio wins back a lot of white collar whites who voted for Obama --- the Dubya/Obama voters with college degrees and solid income potential.  In many ways, this keeps the Republicans focused on the Sunbelt, but also with big swings in Virginia, Colorado, and Minnesota.  The trio of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania still vote Democrat, while Rubio wins much more sober victories in Iowa and Ohio, and loses Maine-2.

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Basically, the Obama/Trump WWC voters still vote Democrat, while Rubio wins back Creative Class white voters and lots of Hispanics for the GOP.  Outcome is a similar electoral vote margin that Trump enjoyed, just with different states and probably with the popular vote going the same way as the electoral vote.  Would have interesting impact on how Democrats proceed to move forward.

I could see CA, MA, and MD being 50% D instead of 60% D, especially California.

A ton.