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Virginia’s election returns show why Marco Rubio would be a smart vice presidential pick for Trump
By Dwayne Yancey,
13 days ago
I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but former President Donald Trump has not consulted me on who he should pick as a running mate.
In the unlikely event he does so, I have quite a bit I’d say to him, but for our purposes today, I will confine myself to the vice presidential slot.
The Trump campaign has been conducting background checks on eight contenders, but it’s widely reported that three names are at the top of Trump’s list: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Over the weekend The Washington Pos t quoted one Republican strategist as saying: “Doug Burgum is the choice if you’re worried about governing. J.D. Vance is the candidate if you think you’re going to win no matter what and you’re trying to shape the party going forward. Marco Rubio is the candidate you pick if you’re worried about winning the election.”
If Vance is the choice, we will all be subjected to a renewed round of reporting on his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which only elevated some of the worst stereotypes about Appalachia (and prompted St. Paul lawyer Frank Kilgore to write a rebuttal, “J.D. Vance Is a Fake Hillbilly,” which I wrote about in a previous column ).
While I normally don’t concern myself with national politics unless there’s some Virginia angle, the prospect of Rubio as a vice presidential nominee does present such an opening. The 2016 Republican presidential primary in Virginia, where Rubio finished a close second, offers both a reason to choose Rubio — and a reason not to, all at the same time.
Let’s dive into the numbers.
You’ll recall that Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses that year, then faded. Trump roared through New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, then headed into the Super Tuesday primaries, of which Virginia was a part. This was the last, best chance for his opponents to stop him — and for Rubio, perhaps the last chance to make his case. The anti-Trump vote was split among too many candidates. Rubio had proven to be a strong vote-getter with one particular slice of the Republican electorate: college-educated suburban voters. Unfortunately for him, those voters came nowhere close to constituting a majority in a rapidly realigning Republican Party. As Rubio looked for a place in 2016 where he could win, one place stood out: Virginia, especially with all those college-educated suburban voters in Northern Virginia.
Spoiler alert: That didn’t work out quite the way Rubio hoped. He came close in Virginia, but not close enough — Trump took 34.8%, Rubio 32.0%, and that was it for Rubio.
Sometimes history becomes clearer the further we get from it, and that’s the case here. We can now analyze Rubio’s 2016 showing in Virginia against Nikki Haley’s performance this year and two things seem clear to me.
How Virginia localities voted in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The more blue a locality is, the more strongly it voted for Donald Trump. The more pink a locality is, the more strongly it voted for Marco Rubio. Data from Dave Leips election atlas.
Virginia shows why Rubio gives Trump what he needs
My analysis here is solely focused on the politics, not whether it’s wise to elect a convicted felon to the nation’s highest office. When considering any vice presidential pick, we must always remember this: In the end, voters don’t pay much attention. Lloyd Bentsen savaged Dan Quayle in their 1988 debate, but voters went ahead and elected a Bush-Quayle ticket by a resounding margin over the Dukakis-Bentsen option. In modern times, the only vice presidential pick who may have made a real difference was Lyndon Johnson as John Kennedy’s running mate in 1960: Kennedy might not have carried Texas without LBJ. Even with Johnson, Texas was problematic as Kennedy looked ahead to 1964, which led to his political trip to Dallas in November 1963.
However, vice presidential picks do help shape our understanding of the presidential nominee. Trump’s choice of Mike Pence four years ago was seen as outreach to religious conservatives who might have been nervous about Trump’s many moral failings. Four years later, Trump doesn’t seem to need to worry about those voters — they seem to adore Trump even if he’s not exactly a model of moral rectitude.
Trump, though, does need the kind of voters who Rubio attracted in 2016: college-educated suburban voters. Picking Rubio would send a clear signal to them: “See, I’m not some crazy buffoon who intends to overthrow American democracy and give a wink-and-a-nudge to those white supremacist thugs who marched through Charlottesville. See, I’ve picked a perfectly rational, and well-respected, senator as my running mate.”
Here’s how Virginia’s results make that case. Rubio won 22 localities, mostly in Northern Virginia and the Richmond area (Lynchburg, Radford and Staunton were three interesting exceptions). Those Northern Virginia and Richmond suburbs were also where the Republican vote collapsed the most under Trump. For the sake of simplicity, let’s just look at Fairfax County. Here’s how many votes the Republican presidential candidate has polled in that county over the past four elections:
In a county with a growing population, Trump saw the Republican vote decline in 2016. He made up a little of that four years later, but only in terms of the raw vote. His vote percentage didn’t really change as turnout increased:
Republicans need to worry about these low percentages in Northern Virginia for the same reason that Democrats need to worry about low percentages in Southwest Virginia: All this makes it harder to win statewide.
The Republican decline in Northern Virginia is not entirely Trump’s doing, but he did accelerate a trend that was already in place. As soon as Trump was out of office, Glenn Youngkin was able to restore some — but not all — of the Republican vote share in the suburbs. He took 34.5% in Fairfax County — and, of course, he won a state that Trump had not.
This is not what Republicans want to hear (any more than Democrats want to hear that they need to make themselves more competitive in rural areas), but if Trump really wants to win Virginia this fall, he needs to be more competitive in those suburbs than he has been. Maybe a weakened Joe Biden will make that easier for him, but in a campaign, you should never count on your opponent failing. You need to figure out how you can succeed. For Trump, that means running better among suburban voters — not just in Virginia, but the other swing states. Of the names on Trump’s list, Rubio might be the best-positioned to help him with those voters. The election results in Virginia help make that case.
Now, for the counterargument:
Virginia shows why Trump doesn’t need Rubio
Nikki Haley in 2024 appealed to the same type of voters that Rubio did, except there weren’t as many of them. She won fewer votes in Virginia than Rubio did, while Trump’s totals in this year’s presidential primary increased over his 2016 numbers. That Haley/Rubio vote represents a declining share of the Republican Party — and Trump seems to be doing just fine in the polls without either one of them at his side.
He could still use help with those voters but the need isn’t big enough to outweigh two downsides to Rubio-as-VP-candidate: First, there’s that pesky constitutional detail that you can’t have a president and vice president from the same state, so Trump would need to change his voter registration back to New York. Second, should Trump-Rubio win, that would set up Rubio for a presidential run in the future, and Rubio may not be seen as Trump’s MAGA heir the way that some other candidate might be.
To me, these two arguments — Rubio gives Trump what he needs vs. Trump doesn’t need any or much help — don’t carry equal weight. As a political analyst, I’m just looking at what it takes for either side to win, and hoping history and math can offer a guide. To my way of thinking, Trump-Rubio has the potential to expand Trump’s base — he need look no further than Virginia to see that.
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