Super Tuesday confirmed anew that Mitt Romney remains the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, but his slow, unsteady march is coming at a steep price. As he advances toward victory in the primary, he is losing ground in the general election.
Nomination battles often strengthen the winner, but some take a toll. Rarely is there a straight line between March and November that predicts the outcome of a general election. Still, Romney is in worse shape at this point in the campaign than virtually all recent previous nominees.
His image among independent voters, the most critical swing group, is more negative now than it was when the primary battle began. He has lost support among women. He is in trouble with Latinos, a growing part of the electorate that is tilting even more Democratic than it was four years ago. He is not as strong as he needs to be among white working-class voters, among whom President Barack Obama has been consistently weak.
Karl Rove, the GOP strategist who guided George W. Bush to his presidential victories, said it is far too early to know what effect the nomination fight will have on Romney’s fall prospects, should he become the nominee. “It’s way premature to say it’s dispositive” about the outcome of the general election, he said.
No one on either side is predicting anything but a close contest in November, given the state of the economy and the nation’s partisan divisions. Obama may look stronger in head-to-head matchups with his Republican rivals today than he did a few months ago, but vulnerabilities remain.
Republicans say the president’s weaknesses will appear more significant once their candidates stop pounding one another and focus the full force of the GOP machinery, including super PACs, on the president. Romney’s allies think he ultimately will be strengthened by the nomination fight, saying opponents have helped to make him a tougher campaigner and a better debater.
Romney has been squeezed between the demands of winning the nod of a party that is more conservative than it was four years ago and the realities of a general election in which winning the middle is crucial.
“He’s sitting there thinking, ‘This will all dissipate when these other guys get off the stage and stop attacking me,’ ” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said. “History suggests that’s not likely to happen. Once you reach a plateau, the negatives are hard to shake, absent some dramatic event.”
There are many reasons why Romney is in this position. The party’s rules for this primary were designed to stretch out the battle, meaning the front-runner cannot wrap things up quickly. Super PACs have helped keep competitors alive longer than they would have been in the past.
The GOP fight has been extremely negative, and super PACs have contributed significantly to the tone of the contest. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have attacked Romney throughout the winter, and their super PACs have done more.
But Romney’s campaign and super PAC have aired more negative ads than the others by far. Some Romney supporters believe his image has been damaged as much by the tactics he has used to go after his rivals as by the attacks they have aimed at him.
