Vice President JD Vance is leading Secretary of State Marco Rubio by 10 points in an early look at the 2028 Republican presidential primary field, according to a recent poll.
Vance, with 33%, is ahead of Rubio at 23%, a New York Times-Siena University poll released Saturday shows. The two administration officials are the most likely to succeed President Donald Trump, though neither has confirmed his intention to run in 2028.
The vice president recently said he will not make a decision until after the midterm elections next week, adding that there is a chance he does not end up running. He noted his wife’s preference for staying out of politics. The married couple has four children together.
Meanwhile, Rubio has said he does not plan to launch a 2028 campaign at this time. Rather, he is solely focused on his role as head of the State Department and two other federal jobs.
The poll shows Trump in third place with 8% support from likely Republican primary voters. The president has repeatedly floated running for a third term in two years, which is prohibited by the Constitution.
At a campaign rally in Iowa last week, Trump claimed he had the “right to run again” if he wanted to do so because Democrats “cheated” in the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), whose term ends in January 2027, is polling at 3%. The governor unsuccessfully ran against Trump in 2024.
The rest of the possible Republican primary candidates featured in the poll include Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), among others. Each of their results was negligible, with support of 1% or less. The remaining 26% said they didn’t know who to back or refused to do so.
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Whoever becomes the Republican nominee will have to face the Democratic Party’s favorite contender, who appears to be former Vice President Kamala Harris at this time. She received 12% support from likely Democratic primary voters, higher than Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, among others.
The New York Times and Siena University surveyed 850 likely Republican primary voters from Oct. 12-19 for the Republican primary question, which was part of a larger poll that was conducted among 3,494 voters. The margin of sampling error was 1.9 percentage points among the likely electorate and registered voters.