As you watch cable news coverage of the presidential race, keep in mind the fact that news organizations have a vested interest in keeping the race tight. Logically, a close race produces much better ratings than a race in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
With that in mind, here is a factor that I have yet to hear mentioned in the coverage I’ve seen: Voters don’t like Mitt Romney.
Last month, for example, a NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that just 33 percent of voters had a favorable view of Mitt Romney — a 6-point drop from the previous poll — while 48 percent had a favorable view of Pres. Obama.
The poll also aggregated responses from voters in eight swing states and found that Romney was viewed favorably by just 30 percent of voters in these states, where, if the race remains tight, the election will be won.
Pres. Obama led Romney 47-43 percent overall in the NBC poll. In the swing states, he led Romney 50-42 percent.
Polls last month also found that Romney’s favorable rating in Florida was 37 percent versus Obama’s at 47 percent; in Ohio Romney had a favorable rating of 32 percent, while the president’s was 50 percent; and in Pennsylvania, the Romney had a 34 percent favorable rating 34 percent while the president’s was upside down at 45-49 percent.
In the ABC-Washington Post poll released yesterday, among registered voters, Romney had a likable rating of just 26 percent.
In our article last month, we looked at the last four presidential races — the only races for which polling data on favorability four months out from Election Day was readily available — in aech race, both candidates had favorable ratings around 50 percent.
Is it possible for Mitt Romney to win the presidency with favorable ratings in the thirties? And, despite the fact that his favorables appear to be trending down, can he turn those numbers around in four months?
It seems very unlikely, but maybe one of our betters in cable punditry will take a look at this issue and weigh in.
- Section: News & Comment
- Topics: Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, Polls
Jon, the real issue is whether likeability will outweigh bigotry. Aren’t we dealing with some hidden biases, even though Romney is simply too slimey to swallow. No one can accuse him of being likeable, but I fear people will choose his ability to make himself money over the President’s desire to make more people able to make money. (thus, classism) I don’t think it’s just about race, either. I think it is also about “socialism” as our right-wing Repugs would say. But race is also in there, even among working class whites. Sorry to say but we haven’t gotten as far as we hoped.
Calgal – I agree that race and all those biases are the real factors in the race. A case can be made that if Obama were white but everything else was the same — this white president had inherited Bush’s Great Recession and his opponent, Romney, was a compulsive liar and a slimy unlikable figure — that the white Democrat would be decisively ahead now.
But what I’m curious about here is more a technical wonky thing: can a candidate — any candidate — whose favorables consistently poll below 35 percent win an election against a candidate whose favorable rating is consistently around 47 percent? I don’t think so.
I keep thinking of eMeg here in 2010. Remember how she had such a huge money advantage — put in $100 million of her own — and all the polls showed that her race against Gov. Brown was neck and neck? The media constantly warned us that the tea party wave was going to sweep California. It didn’t. Meg lost to Gov. Brown by double digits, as did all the GOP candidates except Steve Cooley who got a last-minute donation of $1 million from Karl Rove to his campaign for attorney general against Kamala Harris, who won anyway but by a small margin.
The bottom line is that I suspect the media is cooking the books here. Imagine if Pres. Obama’s favorable rating was consistently showing up in the upper 20s and lower 30s. I believe Chuck Todd and the other horse race prognosticators would make his low favorables the top story of the campaign. Similarly, if the media led all the polling stories with the fact that Romney’s has such low favorables, it would have the effect of depressing his support among independents — it would become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy and Romney’s overall support would go down.
I think they’re ignoring this fact about Romney to keep the horse race tight and their ratings up, and I wonder how long they can pretend not to notice that people just don’t like Mitt Romney.
Well, I like your analysis and I really, truly, deeply hope you are right and I am wrong. Never in my life did I so want to be wrong.