Florida Sen. Marco Rubio offered a rosy picture of the race going forward, especially in the winner-take-all Florida primary. | AP Photo Battered Rubio vows race ‘only gets better for us’ Rivals call on the Florida senator to drop out after he took a shellacking on Saturday night.

Saturday night was not kind to Marco Rubio. The Florida senator, badly trailing Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, lost every state and even failed to pick up delegates in some of the contests.

Despite the dismal news, Rubio offered a rosy picture of the race going forward, especially in the winner-take-all Florida primary.


“We’re going to win Florida, and you’ll find out on March 15 how confident we are,” Rubio said, in Spanish, to supporters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which holds its primary on Sunday. “Tonight we will have more delegates than we did last night,” Rubio promised. “This map only gets better for us.”

Cruz’s campaign, however, said it’s all but over for Rubio.

“It’s devastating. The Florida-or-bust strategy hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work this time,” Cruz’s spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. “Cruz continues to amass delegates as conservatives rally behind him and gets closer and closer to making this a two-man race between him and Trump.”

Trump eked out narrow wins in Kentucky and Louisiana Saturday night, while Cruz scored two big, surprise victories in Kansas and Maine. Rubio was left choking on their dust. He lost by double digits in Louisiana, Kentucky, Kansas, and in Maine, where he failed to even pick up a single delegate.

Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said the Florida senator has been hurt by the heavy schedule of caucus contests and expressed hope that Rubio’s fortunes will improve with the primaries ahead. “So we feel really good about the map moving forward. And after we win the Florida primary, the map, the momentum and the money is going to be on our side,” Conant said. “At this point, nobody is on track to having the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. But after we win Florida, we are going to be on our way to doing so.”

Rubio so far has only won one state – Minnesota – and has only half of Cruz’s delegate count and one-third of Trump’s.

Democrats reveled in Rubio’s implosion. Rubio had been seen as the Republican candidate who could give a real fight to Hillary Clinton in the general election, and appeared to be heaving a collective sigh of relief on Saturday.

President Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted, “I used to think Rubio was the Republican John Edwards. But Edwards did much better than this.”

And Dan Pfeiffer, former senior adviser for Obama, offered this analysis on Twitter, “After tonight, Rubio is no longer running for the Republican nomination, his sole purpose in the race is to deny Trump Florida's delegates.”

But pressure is growing on Rubio to drop out if he can’t effectively prevent Trump from racking up delegate wins. Cruz on Saturday night said it’s time for the Republican Party to unite behind him and for Rubio and John Kasich to step aside.

“Let me speak to folks at home who may have been supporting another candidate when this all got started,” Cruz said. “Maybe right now you’re supporting Marco Rubio or John Kasich. What is becoming more and more clear is if you want to beat Donald Trump we have to stand united as one.”

Trump echoed that sentiment, but with a bit more flair.

“I think it’s time for Marco to clean the deck, and I say that respectfully,” Trump said during his Saturday night press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“We knew this would be the roughest period in the campaign given the electoral makeup of the map,” Rubio said.

Manuela Tobias and Kristin Roberts contributed to this report.