US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gestures as he embarks an aircraft at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on May 26, 2026. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
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President Trump’s favorite poll watcher, CNN’s Harry Enten, says aside from the president himself, Republican voters have a clear favorite in the White House–and it’s not Vice President JD Vance. “Marco Rubio is really, really, really popular with Republicans,” Enten said on CNN’s News Central Wednesday. “His chances to be the Republican nominee in 2028 are up like a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral.”
Enten, the network’s chief data analyst, pointed to figures from Kalshi, the political trading market, which show Rubio’s odds of being the GOP nominee jumping from 11% in January to 30% today. “All of a sudden, the people putting their money where their mouths are are really liking Rubio’s chances,” Enten told CNN’s John Berman.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 20: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) depart the White House on their way to Florida on March 20, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump is spending the weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago Club. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Rubio jumps ahead of Vance, Hegseth and Patel
While Trump has mused in public about whether he’d support Rubio or Vance as a potential successor–even joking that they’d make a great ticket together–Republican voters appear to be solidifying behind Rubio, whose net approval rating is the highest of any member of Trump’s administration at +77 points, according to Quinnipiac. JD Vance sits at +69, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at +63, and FBI Director Kash Patel at +49.
“Marco Rubio is, simply put, the most popular Republican in the Trump Administration besides the president himself, and also, if you zone in a little bit more, of the cabinet itself,” Enten said.
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 19: U.S. President Donald Trump (C) is joined for a family photo along with U.S. Vice President JD Vance (L), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Board of Peace representatives during the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace at the Institute of Peace on February 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. Assembled to raise money for the rebuilding and stabilization of Gaza, Trump’s Board of Peace was formally established on the sidelines of World Economic Forum in January of 2026. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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What happens in 2028 is–at this point–anyone’s guess, especially as Donald Trump’s approval ratings sit at historic lows amid the war in Iran, rising prices on gas and food, and the president’s seeming focus not on improving the economy, but vanity projects like the White House ballroom and a massive arch he hopes to construct in Washington.
Rubio, Enten suggests, might have the best argument that he’d play better in a general election than any of the other Republicans tied to Trump. “It’s Marco Rubio running well ahead of the pack here,” Enten said, noting that Rubio’s net approval rating is -6 percentage points, which isn’t good, but is far better than Vance (-15), Hegseth (-21) and Patel (a whopping -26). “(Rubio) is underwater, but not by that much…and he’s nearly 10 points more popular than JD Vance,” Enten said.
As for the ballroom that Trump loves to talk about, the same Quinnipiac poll found voters solidly against the project, with 60% saying they oppose the ballroom, and 66% of voters saying they’re against spending one billion dollars of taxpayer money on the ballroom. Just 29% of voters support the public funding.
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