Senator Marco Rubio needs the support of Florida’s Latinos — lots of support — to avoid a potentially campaign-ending defeat in his home state this week.

Florida polls show Rubio trailing front-runner Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary race. Rubio, a Cuban-American from Miami, is seeking a big turnout from South Florida’s Cuban-American community and Central Florida’s Puerto Rican community to help him close the gap.

He made that abundantly clear, in English and Spanish, at a campaign rally last week in his home turf of Miami-Dade County.

“As it usually does, it comes down to Florida,’’ Rubio told a crowd of hundreds in a football stadium that seats thousands. “I need you to come out and vote.’’

Rubio reminded those in the crowd that they could even go to an early-voting site nearby and cast ballots.

“If you come out and vote, we are going to win Florida,’’ he said. “I know of no community that understands the American Dream better than South Florida.’’

Demographics outside of South Florida, however, more closely resemble the Deep South. And some political analysts say that means support from Latinos won’t be enough for Rubio to secure a win Tuesday.

“The demographics north of Miami-Dade County favor Trump, and most of the Republican vote is concentrated there,’’ said Eduardo Gamarra, a political scientist from Florida International University in Miami. “The Hispanic vote down here would have to be extraordinary to make up the difference.’’

Rubio was Florida’s Republican rising star, going from city commissioner to state legislator to US senator to presidential contender. But his White House aspirations have foundered since voting began last month. Rubio has won just three of the 22 primaries held thus far — Minnesota, Puerto Rico, and Saturday night’s District of Columbia caucuses — and he came in last place in the four contests held on Tuesday, not picking up a single delegate.

He picked up 10 delegates with his victory in D.C. but he didn’t fare well in Saturday night’s Republican county conventions in Wyoming. Rubio picked up just one delegate, the same as Trump. Texas Senator Ted Cruz won nine delegates.

Still, that Puerto Rico win for Rubio last Saturday gives his supporters some cause for hope that he could do well along the highway corridor that runs from Tampa to Orlando across the middle of the state.

“The strength that Senator Rubio showed in Puerto Rico, I think that’s going to have some impact in the state of Florida because of the large number of Puerto Ricans who have occupied that I-4 corridor,’’ said Rich Ramos, a Tallahassee lobbyist and former executive director of the Broward County GOP. “The I-4 corridor may be a secret weapon that Marco might have in his arsenal.’’

Each month, about 1,000 Puerto Rican transplants arrive in Central Florida, fleeing the island’s economic problems, said Esteban Garces, the state’s director of Mi Familia Vota, a nonpartisan group that holds voter registration drives and engages Hispanics in the electoral process.

“Everyone has historically been focused on Cubans,’’ he said of the state’s largest Hispanic community. “They have the political power.’’

But, he added, “It’s just a matter of time before Puerto Ricans are the largest concentration of Latinos in Florida.’’

Puerto Ricans arrive on the mainland eligible and ready to vote but unfamiliar with the differences between Democratic and Republican parties. Party organizers see their allegiances as up for grabs.

Justin Sayfie, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who was Jeb Bush’s spokesman when he was governor, said a Rubio victory remains a possibility.

“Trump’s momentum has been slowed a little bit in the last week or so, but whether it will slow enough for Rubio or Cruz to overtake him, the next seven days will tell us that,’’ he said.

Rubio and Cruz, whose father is Cuban, will be appealing to Florida’s Cuban-American community “in ways that other GOP candidates in the past have not been able to,’’ Sayfie said. “The Cuban-American vote is a very powerful, influential constituency in the Republican Party.’’

About 11 percent of Florida’s registered Republicans are Hispanic, and most of them live in the three counties that make up South Florida, according to the Florida’s State Division of Elections.

But South Florida is home to only a sliver of the state’s Republican Party. The farther north you travel, the Republican Party gets larger and more white, state election records show.

There are some pockets of Hispanic Republicans in Hillsborough and Orange counties, which are home to Tampa and Orlando in Central Florida, state records show.

“We always think of ourself as the center of the universe, but we are not,’’ Gamarra said of South Florida. “We are not even the center of Florida on the Republican side.’’

In order for Rubio to win, voter turn out must be “huge,’’ he added.

And while images of notoriously long lines at Florida precincts in past presidential elections have been beamed around the world, voter turnout can be surprisingly low in the state’s closed primary. For example, only 14 percent of all registered voters in Miami-Dade County cast ballots in the 2012 primaries, according to the county supervisor of elections.

If that happens on Tuesday, Gamarra said, Rubio is “minced meat.’’

Akilah Johnson can be reached at akilah.johnson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @akjohnson1922.