Rubio finished a distant third in Kansas. It looks like he’ll finish a distant third in Kentucky. And right now—albeit with only nine percent of precincts reporting—it looks like he might finish a distant fourth in Maine. (Update: Rubio received zero delegates in Maine.) Louisiana’s polls don’t close until 9pm, but polling suggests that Rubio will finish a distant third there, as well. Rubio won 30 percent of the vote at CPAC’s meaningless straw poll today, but he is unlikely to clear 20 percent in any of the contests today.
Minnesota aside, Super Tuesday was a disaster for Marco Rubio, and Super Saturday is shaping up to be an awful night for him (and, by extension, the GOP establishment) as well. Rubio is likely to win Puerto Rico’s GOP primary on Sunday, but he should finish the night one-for-twenty-two in 2016. (To his credit, Puerto Rico has 23 delegates, and Rubio may very well win all of them.)
Of course, Rubio and his campaign have played the expectations game brilliantly throughout this primary season. He never won a contest leading up to Super Tuesday, but media spin often made it seem like he didn’t lose any, either. His campaign is still playing the expectations game to great effect—their line is pretty much “None of this matters until Florida.” But people have caught on: the Republican race increasingly looks like a two-man contest and March 15, when Floridians cast their votes, is a long way off.
The Little Marco memes definitely haven’t done Rubio any favors, either.
