Up until this point in the campaign, Mitt Romney could reliably claim that polls showed he was a better candidate to go up against President Obama than his Not Romney rivals. But according to some
interesting numbers from Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen, that's no longer true. According to Jensen, Mitt Romney's electability advantage in PPP polling has disappeared in the wake of Rick Santorum's surge. Before the surge, Romney consistently outperformed his leading Not Romney rival in a hypothetical contest against President Obama by 7 points in July, 6 points in August, 7 points in September, 6 points in October, 3 points in November and 7 points in December. But in PPP's first post-surge poll, it's Santorum who fares better against President Obama.
In the survey survey, President Obama leads Mitt Romney by a wider margin than he leads Rick Santorum—49-42 against Romney and 49-44 against Santorum. That's the first time a Not Romney candidate has done better than Mitt Romney against President Obama. (Ron Paul also polls about the same as Mitt Romney, but he's not a viable contender for the nomination.)
Although PPP is the only poll to show Santorum doing slightly better than Romney, Pew and Rasmussen both show Romney's electability argument is shriveling. Their polls show Romney doing slightly better against President Obama than Rick Santorum, but with a margin of 2 points and 1 point better respectively, it's not terribly meaningful. If you average all three polls together, both Romney and Santorum both trail president Obama by the same 7 point margin. And those kinds of numbers aren't good news for Mitt Romney.
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