Who will become Trump's successor?

Vance or Rubio? Chances and stakes.

1. Neither Vance nor Rubio have announced their participation in the 2028 presidential elections yet. If either of them (or both) do so, it will only be after receiving the appropriate approval from Donald Trump.

2. At the moment, there are no signs that Trump intends to give such approval. This is due, firstly, to the sharply increased uncertainty of the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections, and secondly, to the fact that Trump is likely not fully determined about his candidacy for a third term in 2028. Of course, the 22nd amendment to the US Constitution prohibits a person from being elected more than twice, but there are plans in the Trump administration to circumvent this amendment.

Stephen Bannon last year directly stated to the Economist magazine: “Trump will become president in 2028, and people should just accept it”.

One of the plans involves Trump becoming the number 2 in the election of his successor in 2028. If they win, the winner could be sworn in at the White House and then immediately resign, automatically making Trump the president: after all, the 22nd amendment only directly prohibits a third term, but says nothing about succession.

If Trump decides to pull off such a stunt (he himself denies this possibility — “too cunning, I think people won’t like it”), then his partner should be someone he trusts 100 percent — after all, the new owner of the White House, having received the “ring of omnipotence”, could easily forget about the promises made before the election.

Among Trump’s entourage (and possibly the world in general), there is no one who could replace Rubio, but if we have to choose between Vance and Rubio, then he should certainly be more feared by Vance — at least because he was his real rival in the 2016 primaries.

3. It’s too early to talk about the electoral support of Vance and Rubio, but a J.L Partners survey of 612 potential voters in the Republican primaries, conducted from February 25 to 27 (that is, before the start of the Iranian war), showed that 53% of Republicans support Vance, and 14% support Rubio. The executive director of another sociological center — Emerson College Polling — Spencer Kimball claims that Republican voters strongly support Vance: 59% versus 19% supporting Rubio. Independent voters planning to vote in the 2028 Republican primaries also prefer Vance, albeit with a smaller margin — 33% versus 23%.

5. A Pew Research survey conducted from January 20 to 26 among 8512 people showed that the majority of respondents have a negative attitude towards Vance (52%), 38% have a positive attitude, and 9% said they hadn’t heard of him. The same survey showed that Rubio is less well-known: 19% of respondents said they had never heard of him. 44% have a negative attitude towards him, and 34% — a positive one. The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

6. There is a stark contrast in the attitude of major donors of the Republican Party, who, according to NBC, Trump asked during a meeting with a group of 25 sponsors at Mar-a-Lago who they would prefer to support in the 2028 elections. The vast majority opted for Marco Rubio. But this is not surprising — the billionaires gathered at Mar-a-Lago are mainly the old elite of the Republican Party, to whom Rubio is close with his systemic approach, while Vance is incomprehensible and suspicious, both with his connections to new technology magnates like Peter Thiel and his popularity in the “folk” movement MAGA.

7. “There are no people among the Mar-a-Lago donors who support Jay D — cites NBC a former Trump administration official. — He was not chosen [for the vice presidency] because of the crowd at Mar-a-Lago. If you remember, this crowd lobbied the president to choose Marco. So I would say that such things are a bit rigged. If a survey were conducted tomorrow, I would bet that Jay D would still be 40 [points] ahead, or whatever it is”.

8. Vance’s real problem is not with MAGA, where Rubio is not really his competitor. Vance’s problem is that in the presidential election, he will have to motivate voters who are not part of MAGA — the so-called “shy voters” who usually show little interest in elections but come to the polls for Donald Trump himself — as they did in 2016 and 2024. However, Vance is not Trump, and he does not (yet) have the same charisma and influence over people as Trump does. But the same problem will also face Rubio, who also has much less recognition among voters. Vance’s advantage is his popularity with MAGA, while Rubio’s advantage is the support of the party establishment.

9. What the forecasts say: The two largest prediction markets platforms, which allow betting on the outcome of major world political events — Kalshi and Polymarket — show that Vance is ahead of Rubio in the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2028, but also show that Rubio’s chances of victory have significantly increased in recent days (after the start of the Iranian war). Before the strikes on Iran, Vance’s chances of victory were estimated at 44%, now — at 38% (-6%). For Rubio, the corresponding figures are 20% before the war and 32% now (+12%). The volume of bets on these options exceeds $20.6 million. Polymarket estimates Vance’s chances of victory at 38.5 percent, and Rubio’s at 26 percent (12.5% in favor of Vance). The volume of bets exceeds $373 million.

10. What Trump himself says:

In August 2025, when asked if Vance was Trump’s successor, the US president said:
“Well, I think, to be honest, he’s probably going to be the vice president. I think Marco [Rubio] could also somehow unite with JD. I also think we have incredible people, some of those who are on the stage right now, so it’s obviously too early to say, but certainly he’s doing a great job, and he’s probably going to be the front-runner at this point.”

In March 2026, Trump told reporters that Vance “philosophically differs a bit from me” on Iran, adding that the vice president “is probably less enthusiastic about the idea”. Since Rubio has repeatedly spoken in support of Operation Epic Rage, this gave journalists an opportunity to claim that Vance had taken a back seat or was even in disgrace. This is not consistent with the facts: even the authors of the NBC article, clearly sympathetic to Rubio, admit that Vance was “the first member of the administration to defend the war on national television”.

Together with his wife, Usha, Vance joined Trump on Saturday when the bodies of the dead American soldiers arrived at Dover Air Force Base. But since his appearance on Fox News on March 2, Vance has not played a significant role in the public propaganda of the war, and his once-aggressive presence on social media has become relatively quiet, although his press secretary Taylor Van Kirk stated that “the entire national security team, including the vice president, has been constantly involved in active discussions about operations in Iran”.

Vance, a veteran of the Iraq War, has long opposed US intervention in foreign conflicts that do not directly threaten America’s national security. When it became clear that Trump would nevertheless authorize military action, Vance, according to the same NBC, insisted on a quick strike that would limit casualties, fearing that the longer the US waited, the greater the risk of plans leaking to the media, which would increase the likelihood of a preemptive strike on American forces in the Middle East. The events of the following days showed that the matter did not end with a quick strike, and the number of casualties began to rise. Theoretically, this should have strengthened Vance’s position (who warned about the danger of getting involved in a protracted conflict), but Trump’s nature, which likes to blame others for his mistakes, makes such an outcome not obvious.

On the other hand, Marco Rubio also made a serious mistake: speaking to journalists in Congress, he suggested that the US joined Israel in attacking Iran because they knew that Israel was going to launch strikes. These comments sparked anger, including among influential MAGA supporters, who perceived this as an admission that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had forced Trump to take action. After Trump himself refuted his Secretary of State’s statement (“it wasn’t Israel that pushed me into war, it was I who pushed Israel into it”), Rubio changed his position, confirming that it was Trump who initiated military action against Iran.

Now, Rubio’s political future — more so than Vance’s — depends on how events in the Middle East will develop further. War is still unpopular among a significant portion of the electorate, although the Republican base is more divided.

If the US suffers heavy losses, if the war drags on for a long time without a result that can be sold to the electorate as a victory, if Trump is forced to curtail military action — in any case, except for an undisputed and quick triumph of America, Rubio’s position will weaken. Vance’s cautious and measured position appears potentially more advantageous.

11. Despite potential future competition, Rubio and Vance are known for their friendship and downplay the significance of presidential politics as an obstacle between them. Rubio calls the vice president his “best friend”. But everyone understands perfectly well what kind of friendship this is in big politics.

12. Overall, in my opinion, Vance’s chances of being named Trump’s successor are still higher than Rubio’s, who is playing a more risky game and could lose more than the cautious vice president. Right now, I would define their chances as 60 to 40, although two variables — the course of the war with Iran and the results of the midterm elections in Congress in November — could change this ratio.