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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is leading the "veepstakes" for the Republican vice presidential nomination, followed by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie - but nearly half of GOP voters don't know who they want on the ticket, a new polls shows.

Rubio is preferred as a vice-presidential candidate by 8 percent of Republicans and independents, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University survey released Monday.

Santorum, currently a presidential candidate, placed in second place, as 7 percent of respondents preferred him. Christie rounded out the top three, with 6 percent.

Other politicans were also mentioned as possible vice presidential candidates for the Republican Party, including Sarah Palin (4 percent), Mitch Daniels (1 percent) and even Hillary Clinton (1 percent).

All the other Republican presidential candidates of this cycle - Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman - were also mentioned by respondents in the poll.

Since the question was open-ended, respondents were forced to pick their preferred vice presidential candidate based off of their own knowledge of politics alone. As such, 44 percent of respondents did not offer up their own candidate, saying they didn't know who they preferred.

The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll was conducted Feb. 6 to Feb. 12, with a sample of 799 registered Republican and independent voters. The margin or error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.