Marco Rubio pledged to go on to Utah “irrespective” of Tuesday night’s results in the Florida Republican presidential primary, where recent polls show Donald Trump with a double-digit lead over the home state senator.
“Tomorrow our plan is to be in Utah campaigning irrespective of tonight. It would be a lot better to go to Utah being the winner of the Florida primary. It will give us a tremendous amount of momentum, it will give us 99 delegates, and that’s the way we want to do it tonight,” he said in an interview with WBDO radio in Orlando, which was clipped and published by BuzzFeed.
Rubio has been saying for the past several days that his plan is to continue on to Utah for the state’s upcoming contest, but his comments to WBDO were his firmest yet in terms of actually moving forward should he lose Florida. The Utah caucuses will be held on Tuesday, March 22.
The candidate, who’s barnstormed the state for the past week in a final push to keep his candidacy alive, also gave blistering critiques of recent polls that show him roughly 20 percentage points behind Trump.
“All of these polls are out of control. They’re crazy. They’re way out of whack,” he said in the same interview. “I can’t guarantee a win today. I’m telling you we expect to win tonight, but we are not 20 points behind him. That’s absurd, and I think we’re going to prove that here in the next few hours. So I wouldn’t listen to any of that.”
Rubio argued on Fox News that networks “are going to ask their pollsters for their money back.”
“Polls this election cycle are horrifying,” he added, suggesting many have been inaccurate. “And I quite frankly think a lot of people are going to be embarrassed tonight.”