Marco Rubio is officially the frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election.
Not only is Rubio besting both Republican presidential candidates and potential candidates, but a recent poll shows Rubio is only two percentage points down to Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee before Rubio entered the race was Jeb Bush. Unlike Rubio, Jeb Bush trails Clinton in a head-to-head matchup by percentage point margin of 46-39.
This is significant for Rubio because his name is not as well-known as Bush’s or Clinton’s. Hillary Clinton has been on the national political stage since her husband Bill Clinton was president, so to only be ahead of Rubio by two percentage points at this juncture in the 2016 election cycle should be troublesome news for Team Hillary.
As far as this latest Quinnipiac poll goes, Rubio gets 15 percent of the Republican primary vote, Jeb Bush gets 13 percent, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker comes in third with 11 percent of the vote.
It is still very early to start crowning the next Republican presidential nominee. Look, the Q poll states 14 percent of those polled are undecided, and other GOP candidates like Senators Ted Cruz (9%) and Rand Paul (8%) are both within striking distance of Rubio.
Do early polls like this matter? You betcha!
If they didn’t, Rubio wouldn’t have stated that he would rather be positioned in the middle or towards the back of the Republican presidential primary pack this early in the campaign.
From April 16 – 21, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,353 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points. Live interviewers called landlines and cell phones. The survey includes 567 Republicans with a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points and 569 Democrats with a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.