Rubio Now Leads Vance in ’28 General Election Betting Markets

At the start of President Trump’s second term, Vice President JD Vance was presumed to be the heir-apparent, so much so that betting markets gave him a nearly 50% chance of winning the Republican primary, while the next closest candidates, Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis, were each a given 5% chance. However, with Trump withholding an endorsement and increasingly praising Marco Rubio, the secretary of state now leads Vance in betting markets for the 2028 general election.

On March 12, Rubio led with an 18.8% chance of winning the 2028 presidential election, followed by Gavin Newsom at 18.5% and Vance at 17.3%. This is a stark contrast from the fall, when Vance led with around 30%, Newsom was second at 20%, and Rubio was at 5%.

However, betting markets and polling still have Vance favored to win the Republican primary. In the RCP Average, Vance leads with 45%, followed by Donald Trump Jr. at 17.5%, Rubio at 11.1%, and DeSantis at 7.4%. Vance also has a 38% chance of winning the nomination according to betting markets, followed by Rubio at 28% and DeSantis at 5%.

This discrepancy between Vance leading in primary markets and Rubio leading in general betting markets comes from Rubio being viewed as more likely than Vance to win the general election if nominated in the primary.

In favorability polls, Rubio performs better than Vance. A Pew Research poll from February found that Rubio had a net favorability of -10, while Vance had a net approval of -14 and Trump had a net approval of -18. Vance leads among Republicans, however, with 75% favorability to Rubio’s 64%. (Much of that comes from name recognition, as 19% of Republicans said they had never heard of Rubio, compared with only 6% for Vance.)

Rubio is also viewed more favorably than the rest of Trump’s Cabinet. When asked whether Americans favor or oppose firing other Cabinet members, the latest Economist poll found that Rubio was the only official for whom more respondents opposed his firing than favored it, with 36% opposed and 29% in favor. All others included in the questioning, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth, had more respondents who wanted them fired than those who opposed.

A similar discrepancy shows up on the Democratic side between polling and betting markets. In the RCP Average for the Democratic Presidential Primary, Kamala Harris leads by 6.2 points with 26%, followed by Newsom at 19.8%, Pete Buttigieg at 10.3%, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 8.3%, and Josh Shapiro at 6%. In betting markets for the Democratic primary, Newsom leads with 27%, followed by Ocasio-Cortez at 9%, Jon Ossoff at 7%, Shapiro at 7%, and Harris at 7%.

For the general election, Newsom leads in betting markets as the only Democrat with a double-digit chance of winning. He is followed by Ocasio-Cortez at 6%, Shapiro at 5%, and Ossoff at 3%.

At this point, any of the potential Democratic nominees is generally favored against the hypothetical Republican nominee, with betting markets giving the Democratic Party a 56% chance to win. History supports this conclusion: Since Herbert Hoover, only one nonincumbent from the incumbent president’s party has won the presidency. That occurred in the 1988 election, when George H.W. Bush won while Ronald Reagan had a 57% approval rating, according to Gallup polling.

Based on recent history, Trump is unlikely to have a similarly high approval rating at the end of his term. In his first term, his approval fell into the mid to low 40s and never again rose above 47%. Similarly, during Biden’s term, he was unable to significantly raise his net approval back into positive territory. In both cases, the opposing party won the presidential election that ended their term by significant margins.