CPAC Straw Poll: Rubio surges, closes in on Vance
Among the more than 1,600 CPAC attendees who participated in the poll, Vance came out on top with 53%, followed by Rubio with 35%. In 2025, the secretary of state had garnered 3% of the vote.
Marco Rubio at the G7/ Brendan Smialowski.
JD Vance won the annual Conservative Political Action Conference poll (CPAC). The vice president was the top choice among attendees to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2028, followed closely by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who significantly improved his numbers compared to 2025.
Among the more than 1,600 CPAC attendees who participated in the survey, Vance came out on top with 53%, followed by Rubio with 35%. The poll numbers showed that neither the Republican Party nor the MAGA movement has a clear successor to Donald Trump in 2028.
Leaving aside the vice president and secretary of state, no other candidate got more than 2% of the vote.
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Moreover, the result showed strong growth for Rubio. At the 2025 CPAC, held in Oxon Hill, Maryland, the vice president comfortably led the poll with 61% of the vote, followed by Steve Bannon's 12% and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' 7%. At the time, the secretary of state garnered only 3% of the vote.
The CPAC poll is an informal vote conducted year to year at the nation's largest conservative conference. While the poll does not represent the Republican Party, over the years it has been useful in reading the conservative electorate prior to presidential elections.
However, whoever won the poll did not always become the next Republican nominee. For example, prior to Trump's emergence in Republican politics, Senator Rand Paul led CPAC's preferences in 2014 and 2015.
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