Indeed, and also precisely why Trump was the perfect candidate for 2016, and why Rubio would've Dukakis'd himself.
This is ridiculous. At a minimum, Rubio would have won the Romney states+Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada. He would have done a lot better with Latinos and college educated suburban whites than Trump, which would have allowed him to potentially add CO, VA, PA.
Trump won more votes than Heck and Toomey, and he basically received the same number of votes as Ayotte and Glenn in NH and CO.
Even in Florida, Rubio lost Latinos overall to Patrick Murphy, he received the standard GOP 33-35% margin with non-Cuban Hispanics, there is nothing that indicates a special appeal with non-cuban hispanics (it should also be remembered that Trump won Hispanic Republican primary voters in NV).
By the way, even regarding FL, I will remind you that Rubio was always up +7/8 on Murphy since early 2015 polling, and that's where he finished at, on the other hand, Rubio was in a statistical deadheat with Hillary in FL.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/senate/fl/florida_senate_rubio_vs_murphy-5222.htmlhttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_rubio_vs_clinton-3553.htmlDon't know why you leave out WI, since that was the most plausible pick-up for a Non-Trump Republican considering how well Johnson did relative to Trump.
This whole argument about the trade-off between Romney's college educated whites non-educated whites that were members of the Trump coalition is basically a wash when you look at the numbers for the above races, the only notable exception is WI.
Also, Hillary basically won the same number of voters as Obama did in 2012. Her numbers relative to Obama in CO/NV/VA are about the same, her numbers mainly plummeted in WI (maybe they would've held had she campaigned there, but the polls said she was a shoo-in which is precisely why she didn't).
Even in PA, Hillary mainly held Obama's coalition together, but Trump was able to boost turnout in Appalachia to offset that.
