New Florida poll shows Trump easily beating Rubio, while Trump and Cruz are close in Texas

So does a new state poll showing John Kasich receiving just 7 percent of the vote actually hold good news for the Ohio governor's presidential hopes?

In a weird way, maybe so.

That's because of the numbers at the top of a Quinnipiac University poll of Florida unveiled today, which shows Donald Trump beating home-state Sen. Marco Rubio by 16 points.

One of Kasich's key arguments is that he will win Ohio - although the same university's poll of the Buckeye State released Tuesday showed him trailing the billionaire by 5 points. With Kasich's built-in campaign infrastructure and solid backing of the Ohio Republican Party, most pundits likely would agree that Kasich can win Ohio much more easily than Rubio can win Florida. Both winner-take-all primaries are March 15.

Which brings us to Super Tuesday. So far polls show Texas Sen. Ted Cruz holding off Trump in the Lone Star state, but the margin is narrowing. If Cruz can't win his home state and Rubio can't win his, Kasich could underscore his point that he's the most electable Republican standing to take out Trump. Polls show Kasich outperforms the rest of the GOP field when matched against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Of course there's a major problem with this argument: If Trump wins Texas and Florida, along with his expected trove of delegates in five days on Super Tuesday, he may effectively have the nomination sewn up just as Kasich rises as his main challenger. And if Kasich doesn't win a respectable number of delegates on Super Tuesday, perform strongly in Michigan on March 8, a home-state victory might prove hollow indeed.

One of the more interesting findings of today's poll in Florida: Just 21 percent say they would never vote for Trump, only 4 points more than Rubio (and 6 less than the 27 percent who say Cruz would never get their support).

"If Sen. Rubio can't win in his own home state, it is difficult to see how he can win elsewhere," said Peter Brown, the poll's assistant director, in a release.

"The size and shape of Trump's lead is impressive. He leads in every age group by 9 to 19 percentage points. He does better among men than among women and, despite being a New York multi-billionaire, he leads among those who identify with the Tea Party," Brown said. "He also does twice as well among white evangelicals as does Sen. Ted Cruz, who is trying to make this group his core constituency."

The survey's margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.