Marco Rubio is dipping in national polls going into the final week of 2015. While the drop is slight, and far from irreversible less than six weeks away from the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, where the first votes will be cast in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination, it is happening at a time when the U.S. senator from Florida needs to be moving in the opposite direction.
Viewed by many Republican and Democratic elites as the his party's best hope of winning back the White House, Rubio is polling a distant third both nationally and in the first three voting states. He has lost ground in Iowa to Ted Cruz. In New Hampshire, which hosts the first presidential primary Feb. 9, he faces fresh competition from Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who has been more active in the state in recent months and has picked up some prize endorsements there.
