What would a Rubio electoral map have looked like?

[Mr. Morden]

Basically a rerun of 2012 with a 3.5 point nationwide swing. Some improvement for Rubio in Virginia (due to the Black vote) and probably Iowa (HRC's no Obama), making Virginia a tossup, but Clinton still having an edge there due to the continued expansion of NoVa. Don't overestimate Rubio; don't underestimate Rubio's similarity to Romney, and don't underestimate HRC's ability to shape-shift. This party system is extremely stable. Had it not been for Trump, the state-by-state correlation between the 2012 and 2016 results would have been over .98, especially if the candidate most similar to Romney (Rubio) was picked.

The argument against that would be this:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-not-all-about-clinton-the-midwest-was-getting-redder-before-2016/

[Mr. Morden]

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-Half of 2015 was the year of Trump. So that survey may well be colored by his unique candidacy.

Trump being a ~25-30% plurality favorite in Republican primary polls for a few months resulted in swing voters in the Rust Belt switching from "approve" to "disapprove" on Obama's job ratings (and caused the reverse to happen in the Sunbelt)?  I'm skeptical.

[Mr. Morden]

Trump was by far the biggest story of 2015 in the United States, outshining anything Obama did. His favorability ratings did not change substantially from the time he became the Republican frontrunner to November 8, 2016. Everyone had an opinion of him by late July 2015. You are assuming Trump favorability and Obama favorability are independent variables. I doubt that's the case.

No, I'm assuming that the geographic distribution of both is dependent on which regions of the country are more Democratic and more Republican, and that said distribution had changed from 2012 to 2015.  I don't think that Trump's mere position as the plurality leader in the GOP primary field in the latter half of 2015 instantly caused Obama's job approval rating to rise in places where Trump was less popular than Generic R or drop in places where Trump was more popular than Generic R.  That seems absurd to me.