2028 election: Tulsi Gabbard vs Marco Rubio vs Alex Jones

As the 2028 election dawned, President Tulsi Gabbard's reelection seemed imminent. Her approval ratings were well over 60%, and even some Republicans approved of her actions. As such, the president was nominated without any primary challenges.
Republicans, meanwhile, had a tough decision to make. The Republican voters still overwhelmingly approved of the Trump family, and Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, and even Ivanka were being pressured to run. However, all of them refused, as they saw how Trump jr was steamrolled by Gabbard 4 years earlier. In addition, their father was now in prison and rumored to be in failing health. Thus, Republicans had no choice but to turn to their political establishment for a candidate. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was the early frontrunner, but Florida Senator Marco Rubio pulled ahead after the Iowa caucuses. It seemed certain that Rubio would coast to the nomination.
Then, everything changed. Conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones announced his presidential bid in February of 2028. His cult following was not as strong than that of the Trump's, but it was enough that he was able to win a handful of states and create major headaches for Rubio. Despite Jones's successes, Rubio still won the nomination. He selected his former rival Senator Josh Hawley to be his running mate. Enraged Jones supporters insisted that Jones was cheated out of the nomination. Jones responded by announcing that he was running as an independent and that he was starting his own political party. He called it the American Nationalist Party, or ANP, and selected Rush Limbaugh to be his vice-president.
Jones's third party challenge ultimately proved to be the strongest of its kind since George Wallace's 1968 campaign. Jones even qualified to participate in the presidential debates. President Gabbard hammered him for his promotion of conspiracy theories that ranged from being purely absurd to being extremely dangerous. Senator Rubio, however, was hesitant to criticize Jones directly, instead focusing on debating Gabbard on actual policies. Limbaugh, Sinema, and Hawley also engaged in a debate. While Hawley and Sinema both were well-spoken and focused on actual policies, Limbaugh mostly spent the debate blaming liberals for everything while providing no solutions of his own (whilst simultaneously taunting Hawley as a "RINO.")
With the Republican party now fractured by the ANP, Gabbard was projected to win in a landslide. Like 2024, the polls proved to be true, and Gabbard won easily. However, Alex Jones became the first third party candidate to win a state's electoral votes. In fact, he won five states: Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Ohio. The split of the Republican party allowed President Gabbard to win the states of South Dakota and Kansas, in addition to all the states she won in 2024 (save for Alaska.) The 2028 election also was a symbolic moment for the state of Ohio. Up until Bernie Sanders' election in 2020, no president since JFK in 1960 had been elected, or even reelected, without carrying Ohio. However, the 2028 election showed that the once politically purple state was now perhaps the reddest in the country.
Category:United States Presidential Elections, 2028