Republicans must hope that they nominate a presidential candidate who the public sees as sharing its values and who embodies the future direction of the country. For now, however, the contest for the nomination offers potholes and pitfalls.

“Although Obama and the Republican majority in Congress remain a major focus of the political news coverage, attention is increasingly turning to the 2016 presidential campaign,” Jones’s analysis notes. “Here Democrats may be benefiting from having a well-known and relatively popular front-running candidate in Hillary Clinton, which paints a contrast to the large, fractured and generally less well-known field of Republican presidential candidates.”

The Republican field on paper is substantially better than it was four years ago. But at present, no one is capturing the interest or imagination of the voters.