Is This the End for Marco Rubio?

The presidential campaign trial has been a rocky one for Rubio. He has underperformed in pretty much every primary, except for his wins in Minnesota and Puerto Rico.

So let’s take a closer look at his poor progress. He has finished in a distant second place in South Carolina, Nevada and even in Virginia, where he was expected to finish in first. In Iowa, Hawaii, Idaho, Arkansas and Oklahoma he finished in third place. He placed fourth in Michigan and Mississippi and in New Hampshire he finished in fifth place, behind his former-mentor and recent drop-out candidate Jeb Bush.

His last hope to stay in the race is to win Florida, his home state. However according to the recent Florida polls, his future in the sunshine state doesn’t look bright. In a Monmouth poll release earlier this week, it showed that Trump is expected to win, with Rubio behind by eight points. This recent poll is much more in Rubio’s favor. Other polls, including Quinnipiac and PPP from late February, show Trump up by 16 and 20 points over the Floridian.

Not to mention, it has been projected that he has not picked up any delegates from last night’s primary. Even if he was to miraculously win Florida, 99 delegates wouldn’t be enough to put him even close to Ted Cruz.

So with a gloomy forecast like this, there have been recent stories stating that his team has been deliberating if they should pull out of the race. However, Communications Director Alex Conant denied the claims in the breaking news story from CNN by Jaime Gangel. He Tweeted: “This is 100% false. Marco is only candidate who can stop Trump in Florida & we are determined to do so.”

Although Conant claimed this story was inaccurate, Gangel still defended the article.

“We were told that there’s been a serious internal debate by a very knowledgeable source, and that debate is about whether or not he should drop out before Florida. That source told us that top advisers have told Rubio that they do not see a path to the nomination and they’re advising him to get out before Florida for a simple reason: They don’t want him ‘to get killed’ in his home state and they’re afraid that a poor showing would be a risk and hurt his political future, whether someday he might want to run for governor or being considered for vice president. Now, for the record, Alex Conant—the communications director for the Rubio campaign—came on our air last hour. He was very upset about this report. He said it was not true, that there is no dissent within the campaign, and once again repeated that Rubio was staying in. But, we double checked with our source, who confirmed that our story was 100 percent correct. So, the Rubio campaign may not be happy the story is out there when they’re fighting for their life and trailing in the polls. They don’t want people to know there’s dissent in the campaign. But the reality is we were told there has been a serious debate about whether he should drop out before the Florida primary, and also because they’re very concerned that tomorrow he’s not going to do very well in any of those states,” said Gangel.

Nonetheless, even if Rubio remains in the race for next Tuesday’s primary, he will likely lose in Florida. That being said, it’s reasonable to speculate what will be his next move. All is not lost if he is defeated in his home state and has to drop out of the campaign, besides his dignity, of course. With his new political capital, he might make a run for an election in Florida he can actually win, like for the title of governor. This is perfect timing because the current Florida governor, Rick Scott is in his last term.