Expressing confidence in a Mitt Romney Election Day victory, Sen. Marco Rubio says President Barack Obama never thought he'd be in a tight race for re-election.
"Barack Obama, politically, has never been where he is tonight, which is on the ropes, facing backlash, facing a lack of enthusiasm," the Florida Republican told Fox News' Sean Hannity Monday night. "He's never faced anything like this."
Rubio, a key surrogate in the Romney campaign, said Obama's reliance on early voting won him the election in 2008, but this year is different. He said the early voting and registrations in Florida and in other swing states has been trending toward Romney, leaving Obama trailing going into Election Day.
In Florida, for example, Rubio said Romney "could actually be up 200,000 to 300,000 votes" already based on GOP polls of early and newly-registered voters.
"The reason why Barack Obama won by such a wide margin in 2008 was he ran up huge margins in the period leading up to Election Day with his early voting, and those margins are gone," Rubio said, adding that the early voting in the Sunshine state among Democrats "is down by half" this year.
"So he doesn't have nearly enough lead in terms of the registration gap going into Election Day," he added.
"I feel great about Florida, and we're seeing similar numbers across the country in places like Virginia, North Carolina, you know, Ohio, even Pennsylvania," the senator added.
Rubio credited Obama's "negative campaign from start to finish" with helping to drive more early voters, including independents, toward Romney.
"It's an angry campaign," he said, claiming the president has "had very little to talk about in terms of what he would do in the future."
Instead, he said the president had "deliberately" tried to pit Americans against each other by painting Romney as an rich, out of touch, and unacceptable alternative.
"I think that's turned off a bunch of voters that were with him in 2008," Rubio said.
"Americans at their core just don't like this negativity," he added.
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