For the second yr in a row, United States Vice President JD Vance has topped the straw ballot on the 2026 Conservative Political Motion Convention (CPAC), one of many greatest right-wing gatherings within the nation.
The ballot is a bellwether – albeit, not essentially an correct one – for who would possibly in the end turn into the Republican nominee for the following presidential race.
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Throughout this yr’s four-day convention, attendees have been requested which candidate they would favor to guide the Republican Get together ticket for the 2028 election.
The outcomes have been revealed on stage Saturday. Vance had swept up 53 percent of the votes forged by practically 1,600 attendees.
However rising up the ranks was one other senior official beneath US President Donald Trump: his high diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A former senator from Florida, Rubio notched 35 p.c of the vote.
It was a markedly improved standing for Rubio, who tied for fourth place at last year’s CPAC straw ballot.
That ballot, taken inside weeks of Trump beginning his second time period, confirmed Vance with 61 p.c assist, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with 12 p.c, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 7 p.c. Rubio and Consultant Elise Stefanik each earned 3 p.c.
Attendance at CPAC, an annual convention, tends to skew away from the political centre and farther to the precise.
Audio system at this yr’s convention included Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Iranian opposition chief Reza Pahlavi, and Eduardo and Flavio Bolsonaro, the sons of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who was imprisoned final September for making an attempt to subvert his nation’s democracy.
However this yr’s straw ballot comes at a essential time for the Republican Get together.
Lower than eight months stay till November’s midterm elections within the US, and Republicans are hoping to defend their congressional majorities on the poll field.
Trump, lengthy the standard-bearer for his occasion, has seen his approval numbers sink since his return to workplace in 2025. Earlier this week, a survey from the information company Reuters and the analysis agency Ipsos discovered that solely 36 p.c of US residents authorised of his job efficiency, a brand new low.
The continuing conflict in Iran and financial frustrations, together with rising fuel costs linked to the battle, are among the many elements contributing to the droop.
Whereas Trump has teased he might search a 3rd time period, US legislation prevents fashionable presidents from serving greater than two. His second presidency is ready to run out in 2028.
That leaves an open query as to who might succeed the 79-year-old Republican.
Vance, a veteran and former single-term senator from Ohio, is seen to symbolize a extra isolationist department of Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” (MAGA) base. He has typically been against US involvement in overseas conflicts, although he has defended Trump’s determination to affix Israel in joint strikes on Iran.
Rubio, in the meantime, has an extended political resume than Vance and is seen to be extra hawkish in the direction of regime change, significantly in his household’s ancestral dwelling of Cuba. He served as a senator for Florida from 2011 till his unanimous affirmation as secretary of state in 2025.
Each males had been essential of Trump earlier than becoming a member of his administration. Vance as soon as referred to as Trump “unfit” for workplace, and Rubio derided Trump as a “con artist” and an “embarrassment” when he was a rival candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
CPAC tends to not survey contributors about who must be president when a Republican is already within the Oval Workplace.
However the straw polls it held earlier than and after Trump’s first time period, from 2017 to 2021, have proven a noticeable realignment within the Republican Get together.
Within the decade main as much as the 2016 election – Trump’s first profitable marketing campaign for workplace – reasonable Republican Mitt Romney and libertarian Rand Paul constantly received the CPAC straw polls.
Ever since his first time period, nevertheless, Trump has trounced the competitors.
Regardless of his 2020 election defeat, he nonetheless garnered essentially the most backing in 2021’s straw ballot, with 55 p.c assist, and his numbers climbed every successive yr, by to his re-election in 2024.
Specialists have famous that the Republican Get together has largely consolidated round Trump’s politics, with the few remaining reasonable and important voices more and more marginalised.
The CPAC straw ballot, nevertheless, is just not at all times correct. Forward of Trump’s victory in 2016, nearly all of straw ballot contributors backed Senator Cruz of Texas to be the following president. Trump got here in third place with 15 p.c assist, trailing Rubio at 30 p.c.
