A GOP presidential candidate can get within spitting distance of 50 percent of Florida’s voters if Sen. Marco Rubio is his or her vice-presidential running mate, according to a new poll from Suffolk University in Boston.
The poll offers what may be an even more enticing proposition for President Barack Obama: Were he to jettison Joe Biden and replace him with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his level of support would rocket up from the low-40s to 50 percent, said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s political research center.
“I was amazed at not only how much she moves the tickets,” Paleologos said of Clinton’s potential to galvanize Florida’s Democrats. “It’s like she straps the Democratic ticket on her back.”
Without Rubio in the mix, Mitt Romney runs neck-and-neck with Obama at 42 percent; Obama would lead Herman Cain 42 percent to 39 percent, and beat Rick Perry 46 percent to 34 percent, the poll showed.
With Rubio on the ticket, however, a Republican presidential nominee would best Obama 46–41, with 12 percent undecided and 2 percent voting for an independent candidate.”
Most of those undecided voters will support a challenger — in this case, the GOP nominee — during tough economic times, Paleologos said.
Rubio is decidedly not promoting himself for the job. In early October, he declared at event organized by National Journal that “I am not going to be the vice presidential nominee.”
Other GOP candidates, including Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, offer advantages to any future GOP nominee.
In October, Suffolk polled 800 registered voters in Florida because the choice of a vice president is becoming more imminent, said Paleologos.
A potential boost from Hillary would be significant for the president, he added, because Obama is likely to win over a small fraction of undecided voters. Most go for the challenger, not the incumbent, he said, so if “you run as an incumbent, you want to be as close to 50 percent as you can [be].”
Florida is critical to victory in 2012, Biden told the state Democratic Party convention last Friday. “We plan on winning Florida. We can’t win without Florida.”
“You all are going to be seeing an awful lot of me,” Biden said, “because the states I am going to be concentrating on are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and Iowa, and I am going to be here a lot.”
But Biden doesn’t seem to help the ticket, said Paleologos. “I don’t think Biden hurts, and I really don’t think Obama would make a decision [to replace him]. That would be a decision that Biden would have to make,” said Paleologos.
“He’s been a loyal team Democrat for many years [but] if he took himself out, and forced Obama to pick somebody new, here’s a natural pick,” he said.
Clinton is especially popular among young and Hispanic voters, and would allow Obama to break new ground by electing the first female vice president, he said.
But Rubio would also be a first, and he is also popular among younger voters and Hispanics, he said.
Rubio might also help the eventual GOP candidate in Nevada and Florida, where Hispanics comprise roughly 15 percent of the population, and in New Mexico, where almost 40 percent are Hispanic.