Andrew Romano has pored over polling data and news-clippings from the last 36 years and discovered that favorable/unfavorable numbers are the best predictor of who will win a presidential election. He’s also discovered that Mitt Romney’s favorable/unfavorable numbers are the worst in modern history. The only modern candidate to prevail in November after having net-negative approval numbers in the spring is Bill Clinton, and there were some special circumstances in that particular case. You might remember that Bill Clinton had to slog through a lot of allegations about his infidelity, the draft, smoking marijuana, etc. You might not remember that almost no one knew who he was before the primaries began.
The trouble for Romney is that his favorability deficit is significantly larger than Clinton’s ever was. Right now, Mitt’s unfavorables average 49.6 percent; Bill’s never once rose that high, at least in the Gallup poll. Mitt’s favorables, meanwhile, currently average 37.6 percent; after April 12, 1992, Bill’s never dipped below 40. Clinton never posted any unfavorable numbers in the 50s or favorable numbers in the 20s; again, Romney has done both, five times apiece. In other words, more people liked Clinton back then than like Romney now, and fewer people disliked him, which suggests that Clinton’s post-primary popularity reversal was easier than Romney’s is likely to be. Clinton was a fresh, unfamiliar figure who turned out to be the most persuasive politician of his generation, and even then, he captured only 43 percent of the vote on Election Day 1992. Romney, meanwhile, has been running for president since 2006; voters have had a lot more time to make up their minds about him. Unless Mitt suddenly becomes as charming as Clinton—or suddenly convinces Ross Perot to enter the race—the task ahead of him may be the most daunting any modern nominee has ever faced.
I’d be interested to compare people’s reasons for disliking Bill Clinton in the spring of 1992 with their reasons for disliking Mitt Romney today. I suspect that there is a little bit of overlap, but that the reasons are largely different in type. Romney, after all, is a family man who is more known for hating marijuana than using it. Romney also has a more socially-acceptable excuse for missing out on the Vietnam War than Clinton’s (and it’s not much of an issue anymore).
Clinton was tagged as a “Pander Bear” by Paul Tsongas, and his willingness to say anything kind of resembles Romney’s penchant for flip-flopping, but to nowhere near the same degree. I think Clinton’s unpopularity was rooted, more than anything else, in a first impression that carried a lot of doubts about his character and honesty. If Romney’s character and honesty are causing concern, I think it’s more policy related than personal. People don’t think he’s immoral so much as they have no idea where he stands.
I think Romney has two other things weighing him down. The first is relatively easy to fix. Some people who don’t want him to be the Republican nominee are expressing disapproval about him to pollsters. But when he wins the nomination, they’ll give a more positive response. The second is that he’s awkward and weird and gaffe-prone and aloof and hard to relate to. In this, he’s shares some characteristics with Dukakis, Dole, Gore, and Kerry. He’s never going to win the “who-would-you-rather-drink-a-beer-with” contest because he doesn’t even drink beer.
A final problem isn’t specific to Romney. I just don’t think the Republican Party is very popular right now. There’s a built-in negative feeling towards all the Republican candidates and their leaders in Congress.
To win in November, Romney will have to make history. Not by being one of the wealthiest men elected president, or even the first Mormon, but by changing more minds that are more deeply set against him than any other nominee in recent memory. If he can’t convince the unprecedented number of voters who have already decided they don’t like him that, actually, they do, he will be heading back to Massachusetts—or New Hampshire, or California, or Utah—come November 6.
He’s going to need a bigger Etch A Sketch.
