Willard Mitt Romney, you see, was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. His name ID is probably about the same as Clinton’s is. So it’s harder to look at his 17-point deficit and chalk it up to just some early poll that, to quote the poll doubters, “means nothing.”
And in fact, this isn’t the first time he has trailed badly against Clinton in a hypothetical match-up. A McClatchy-Marist College poll from last month showed him down 12 points.
And it’s not skewed samples or anything like that. In fact, Romney performs worse than he did in 2012 among almost every demographic tested (for which we have comparisons between the two polls and his 2012 showing). And that’s a comparison to an election that he lost.
