Marco Rubio is on track to lose his home state of Florida, the state on which his presidential primary campaign utterly depends. While Rubio’s personal failings as a candidate are substantially to blame, so is the fact that he’s barely been running a real campaign. Rubio’s campaign was based around his perceived media appeal, Sasha Issenberg reports, rather than around little things like voter outreach or ground game:
Rubio had all but abandoned individualized contact by Super Tuesday. Throughout the year, the campaign had made only symbolic investments in field operations—enough to convince the press and local party figures that he was taking seriously grassroots interaction but not enough to dramatically shape the electorate through them.
Once Trump swamped Rubio in media coverage, the plan was shot. Now, Rubio is playing catch-up on his home turf, but it’s not at all clear he can catch up:
By applying the three most recent Florida surveys’ polling averages to the early ballots cast, Rubio could be trailing Trump by as much as 62,0000 votes or as few as 30,000. That’s not an insurmountable lead and, if Rubio were to suddenly start winning about 35 percent of all the GOP votes today to Trump’s 31 percent, the Florida senator would win the state.
The effort needed to do that, however, has yet to materialize in force.
Rubio’s campaign isn’t advertising, pro-Rubio Super PACs aren’t spending enough on advertising, and Rubio’s campaign is only just starting any kind of real ground game. What’s more, he may go into the March 15 Florida primary with another string of losses to his name. And if Rubio can’t win Florida, even his most tireless boosters will have to admit he’s not the anti-Trump silver bullet they were looking for.