grammar - Is it common to use "where" after "a time" as a relative?


I heard the following comment of Mr. Marco Rubio about Mr. Donald Trump on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in a clip in February 29th AP Radio News:



“There is never gonna be a time where the Republican Party rallies around and says you have to get out or anyone has to get out for purposes of rallying around Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not Republican Conservative. Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history.”



I thought I misheard “There is never gonna be a time where –“ for “There is never gonna be a time when –“ at first, because I was in understanding that time should be trailed by “when” as a relative noun or adverb. An English Japanese dictionary at hand (Readers English Japanese Dictionary published by Kenkyusha) provides “where” singly as a relative to refer the ‘place.’


However, my lookup of the following two sources endorsed that I heard it right:



Here is what is never going to happen in this race. There's never going to be a time where the Republican Party rallies around and says you have to get out or anyone has to get out for purposes of rallying around Donald.. - Source


“Here is what is never going to happen,” Rubio continued. “There's never going to be a time where the Republican Party rallies around and says you have to get out or anyone has to ...


- Source Link



Is it common, at least not uncommon to use “where” after “time” as a relative?



Answer



"Time where" is not as idiomatic as "time when", but not impossible. More broadly used noun with the relative adverb where is "period" as in:


enter image description here


[European Community Contract Law, Volume 1]


If you consider the "time" used in the Marco Rubio's sentence as "a block of time" which you can visualize in a timeline, there is no reason that you can't use where after time as in:


enter image description here


[The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and ..., Volume 2]


Also, time is synonymous with instance or occurrence (Definition 3.4 in Wiktionary).


It is a safe bet to say that you can use "where" after "time" when it is synonymous with instance or situation (circumstance) as in:



There is never gonna be an instance (situation / circumstance) where the Republican Party rallies around and says you have to get out or anyone...



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