‘Woof!’ CNN Data Guru Says Vance ‘Dropping Like a Rock’ in Key State as Rubio Surges

Vice President JD Vance has some work to do in the Granite State, according to CNN’s data guru, who highlighted a new poll showing competition on the vice president’s heels in New Hampshire.

The new survey by the University of New Hampshire showed Vance at just 36% compared to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 26%, a massive change since February, Harry Enten pointed out, when Vance lead the survey 53% to Rubio’s 7%.

“What wasn’t a race in February has become very much a race right now,” said Enten, who noted Vance was “dropping like a rock.”

He then dug deep into the history of New Hampshire’s presidential primary polling history to see how Vance compared to polling for past vice presidential candidates in the state:

Yeah, OK. So you see right here you see a 10-point gap right between Rubio and Vance. Well, I wanted to look back in prior years to understand where were sitting VPs who eventually ran. How big were their leads in New Hampshire in the early primary polls? And compare that to Vance.

So these are VP leads, early New Hampshire primary post. You know, Vance is up 10 points. As I mentioned, Al Gore was up 40 points at this point. He barely won in New Hampshire, right? He barely won over Bill Bradley. How about George Herbert Walker Bush?

He was up 26 point in the early primary polls. And of course, he had to come back and win New Hampshire after losing the Iowa caucuses. So this lead is historically small.

You would expect a VP to be much more up in the early polls in New Hampshire, especially with a popular president within their own party. But that is not the case right now with JD Vance.

He has a historically small lead for a VP and a lead that has been closing, very much closing over the last six months. This is probably the best polling data that Marco Rubio has received, and probably the worst polling data that JD Vance has received ahead of 2028 so far.

The poll was conducted among more than 1,500 respondents who took online surveys between July 15 to July 20. The margin of error is 2.6%.

The UNH survey echoes an Emerson College poll that found Vance the top choice for 39% of likely voters who were polled, compared to 38% who picked Rubio.

Watch above via CNN.

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