Recently, there has been a surge in the chance online betting sites give US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to win the presidency in the 2028 election.
As of the time of writing this, he is the favourite to win in 2028 on the decentralized crypto prediction market Kalshi. However, the field is still fragmented, with no major difference in percentage chance among the top candidates—understandably so, since we are still around six months away from the 2026 midterm election during the second Trump administration.
Rubio currently sits at a 20 per cent chance of becoming the next POTUS, followed by Vice President JD Vance at 17, and California Governor Gavin Newsom (the highest-ranked Democrat on the list) at 16 per cent.
Rubio surged as the favourite on Kalshi on 8 May, which the site noted in a post to X.
On Polymarket, another crypto betting site, Vance remains the narrow favourite for being the winner in 2028 with around a 19 per cent chance. Newsom is in second place with 17 per cent, while, in that betting market, Rubio is only third with 13 per cent. However, he more than tripled his chances since the beginning of the year, when he was at just 4 per cent.
Despite bettors seeing more and more potential in Secretary Rubio, he has yet to make significant headway in polling for the Republican primary field, which is still dominated by Vice President Vance.
Currently, VP Vance has a 28.7-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate among potential GOP nominees in 2028. Rubio is in second place, and has been consistently polling in the 10–20 per cent range since the start of the year.
Can Marco Rubio Win the Presidency in 2028?
The reality of the situation is that as the Iran conflict drags on longer and longer, the chance of a Republican being elected the President of the United States decreases.
However, the bombardment of Iranian targets by US forces and Iranian missile strikes on oil infrastructure in nearby Gulf states, which we saw in the ‘hot’ part of the war from 28 February to the 8 April ceasefire, still have not restarted yet despite President Trump firmly rejecting Iran’s response to the US peace plan. This suggests that negotiations through the mediator Pakistan are still ongoing.
In other words, the Iran conflict could significantly de-escalate within the timeframe of a few days, which would make discussions about prospects of the 2026 midterm election, let alone the 2028 presidential election, a whole different ball game. Markets also did not panic the way they did during the tariff frenzy by President Trump in 2025 either: on Monday, 11 May, the Dow Jones closed the trading day up 0.19 per cent, and up 2.73 per cent year-to-date.
The most pressing issue created by the Iran war is high gas prices.
In that regard, Republicans still have one thing working for them. As of now, the betting favourite to win the Democratic nomination is California Governor Gavin Newsom. His state has consistently had the highest gas prices, typically around a $1 more than the national average, for the past years due to the high state fuel taxes. This fact would certainly aid Secretary Rubio, or any Republican running, in their pursuit of the highest office after President Trump.
Also, Secretary Rubio would be the first Latino President of the United States. That could certainly be a great asset for Republicans, as it could inspire a surge in support among the crucial voting demographic.
This happened in the election of President Obama in 2008, when black voter turnout surged, and Democrats secured an even higher than usual percentage of the black vote in that era. However, the same did not occur for Hillary Clinton among female voters, when she was running to become the first woman President in 2016.
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