Marco Rubio has not won a state, a fact that worries allies and pleases skeptics who mock his chances to win the Republican presidential nomination.
It doesn’t even sound as if the Rubio team knows when it will win one.
Can this strategy really work? Could he really lose every state on Super Tuesday and still stand a chance of becoming the nominee?
The delegate math says yes. No, it wouldn’t be optimal for Rubio to lose all 12 contests on March 1, Super Tuesday. His chances of amassing an outright majority of delegates, and becoming the presumptive nominee before the convention, would be quite low. But he would still have a real chance to take a clear delegate lead over Donald Trump and win the nomination.
Window closes on Super Tuesday
That window closes March 15. On that day a slew of big winner-take-all states will vote. If Rubio can’t hold his own in those states — Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Missouri and North Carolina — it will become extremely difficult for him to finish the primary season with a lead in pledged delegates. His more realistic strategy then would be to deny Trump a majority and hope to win at a contested convention.
So, yes, the delegate math works. The problem for Rubio isn’t the math; it’s winning even the small number of states needed to pull it off.
Rules buy time for Rubio
The Republican delegate rules, relative to those for the Democrats, are biased toward candidates who win. That makes it very easy to imagine how Trump could sweep to the nomination over a divided field.
But that’s not so true before March 15, when party rules prevent states from apportioning their delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Most states wound up splitting their delegates, awarding a pool of at-large delegates proportionally by the percentage of the vote and awarding other delegates to the candidates who lead in each congressional district.
As a result, it will be difficult on Super Tuesday for Trump to amass a significant majority of delegates if the other two major candidates — Rubio and Ted Cruz — clear the thresholds (at highest 20 percent) for earning proportional delegates. It seemed quite possible a few weeks ago that Trump could build a big lead on Super Tuesday, but Jeb Bush’s exit from the race and the big bump in Rubio’s poll numbers make it far less likely that Trump can pull that off.
Splitting the vote
Imagine, for a moment, that the candidates fare about as well on Super Tuesday as they have through the first four contests. Given the types of states in play on Super Tuesday, perhaps that yields something like a 34-25-25 percent split between Trump, Rubio and Cruz.
In this scenario, Trump claims a clear edge in delegate accumulation but not a majority. He gets 279 delegates, or just 44 percent of the delegates at stake, while Rubio receives 164 delegates.
It’s a respectable tally for Rubio, even though he loses every state. That’s because he clears 20 percent in every state. That scenario includes Texas, where the most delegates are at stake on Super Tuesday and where Rubio is in the most danger of missing the delegate threshold because of Cruz’s home-state popularity. For anyone counting delegates, whether Rubio reaches 20 percent in Texas is a lot more important than anything else.
Rubio's objectives
Supposing that Rubio clears all of these thresholds, he has two big objectives: beating Cruz in the South, in hopes of driving him from the race, and winning a state or two. His schedule reflects this strategy. He’s visiting a host of Southern states where Cruz is hoping to do well, and where delegate thresholds still pose some risk to his ability to deny Trump a majority of delegates. He’s spending all of Sunday in Virginia, which should be one of his best states because of its mix of religious and well-educated voters. Virginia is a clear momentum play (the lift that could come from finally winning); the state uses a purely proportional delegate system, so there are fewer delegates to be gained there than by winning just about anywhere else. Minnesota would seem to be another good option for Rubio.
Win in Florida would be huge
The deficit for Rubio after Super Tuesday in this scenario — 181 overall and 115 from Super Tuesday — would not be especially big. If Rubio won Florida — a winner-take-all state worth 99 delegates — it could balance out nearly all losses from Super Tuesday.
But for the same reason that Rubio can erase so much damage by winning in Florida on March 15, he can’t afford to lose on March 15 either.
Ohio and Florida will award their delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Missouri will award its delegates on a winner-take-all basis by congressional district, and Illinois isn’t much different. North Carolina, on the other hand, awards its delegates proportionally. It figures less prominently in the delegate math and as a result the candidates are unlikely to spend money there on television advertisements or campaign stops.
To barely edge ahead of Trump
If Trump swept the day in the same way he is expected to sweep Super Tuesday, he would net nearly three times as many delegates as he would on Super Tuesday, defeating Rubio, 282 delegates to 40. For Rubio, winning Florida would make Trump’s advantage a more manageable 183 to 139, but his hole would start looking pretty deep.
With that sort of a deficit, Rubio’s chances of winning a majority of delegates would all but evaporate.
Even if Rubio swept on March 15 and started doing as well as Mitt Romney did at that stage in 2012, he would barely edge ahead of Trump in the pledged delegate count. And of course, there would be plenty of reason to question whether Rubio could really do so well after losing so many states to that point.
Delegate math isn’t the problem
Winning by March 15 is what matters for Rubio, not the math.
It’s not going to be easy. The Republican establishment is flocking to him, but the escalating pace of the primary season makes it harder for him to take advantage of growing support from the party. There’s not much time for him to raise money, and whatever he does raise will be spread fairly thin.
The party isn’t fully unified either, with Cruz and particularly John Kasich remaining in the race. Trump holds between 30 and 40 percent of the vote, most national surveys say, so it is very difficult for Rubio to overtake him when votes are siphoned off by another candidate. If Kasich remains in the race, his home state of Ohio will be very difficult for Rubio to win.
An unfavorable outlook
There’s a final issue: Some big winner-take-all and winner-take-most states aren’t necessarily favorable ground for him.
Trump has tended to fare best with less educated and less religious voters. There’s also evidence he does better in places with a larger nonwhite population. Florida and Ohio fit the bill. And separately New Jersey also shapes up well for him later in the calendar. They’re all projected to be above-average states for Trump based on the results so far (though obviously this can change, and it doesn’t account for a potential home-state edge for Rubio in Florida and Kasich in Ohio).
New Quinnipiac surveys show Trump ahead in Ohio and Florida.
Needs others to quit
But there is one important bit of good news for Rubio: the struggles of Ted Cruz. He has finished third in two consecutive contests where he had hoped to perform well. He is in danger of being shut out on Super Tuesday; he could even lose his home state, Texas. Polls show him falling behind Rubio in other Southern states like Georgia and Oklahoma.
The Cruz campaign has always been clear that it is counting on a strong showing on Super Tuesday, and Cruz’s path to the nomination would look exceptionally bleak if he fared as poorly on March 1 as he did in South Carolina and Nevada. It could be enough to force him from the race. Kasich’s play is less clear, but he could quit if he finishes poorly in Michigan on March 8.
If Cruz or Kasich exited, it would give Rubio the chance to build a coalition of ideologically consistent conservative voters and more mainstream, well-educated conservatives.
One-on-one race would put heat on Trump
The onset of a real one-on-one race would pose a real challenge to Trump, who would finally be forced to build a majority coalition.
So far, more GOP voters tell pollsters they would definitely oppose Trump than currently support him, which at least raises the possibility that Rubio could prevail in a one-on-one fight. Polls pitting the two against each other have shown a tight race or even a lead for Rubio.
Trump would also have to overcome a barrage of negative television advertisements — something he hasn’t had to face very much of so far.
Whether Rubio could in fact consolidate the preponderance of Kasich or Cruz’s supporters is hard to say.
But whether it happens before March 15 could easily decide the outcome of the Republican race.
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