Mitt Romney has been dipping his toes in the presidential waters for the last couple of weeks, and it looked like he was preparing to run for that office a third time. All that ended on Friday, as Romney announced he will not be seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
Why did Romney change his mind? Perhaps the biggest reason is that Wall Street and many other big donors balked at another Romney candidacy. They got a lot of bad publicity the last time he ran, and they weren't too thrilled at the prospect of a repeat of that. Add to that the fact that Rupert Murdock, the owner of Fox News, doesn't like Romney -- making it a pretty sure bet that he would not be getting a lot of good press from Fox News (the publicity arm of the Republican Party).
Romney has never been liked very well by the teabaggers, who control the party in many states, and without the support of Fox News and Wall Street it became clear to Romney that he could not overcome that teabagger dislike. Romney finally accepted that getting the nomination in 2016 would be an extreme long shot, so he dropped out.
Some think this makes Jeb Bush the clear favorite. I don't think so -- at least not yet. Fox News conducted a poll of Republican voters between January 25th and 27th (and asked who they supported if Romney didn't run), and the results are in the chart below. It shows Bush with a small lead, but a long way from a prohibitive lead (and at least two others within the margin of error).
Public Policy Polling also did a survey of the Republican hopefuls between January 22nd and 25th, but since Romney was included in the poll it cannot give us a real picture of who is leading. They did also ask respondents if their view of the individual candidates was favorable or unfavorable, and that tells us a little.
It shows Bush with a substantial favorability rating -- but five other candidates (Paul, Huckabee, Carson, Cruz, and Perry) all had higher favorability ratings. Only one GOP hopeful, Chris Christie, had a higher unfavorable than favorable rating. That means Christie's chances are looking dimmer, but the nomination could still go to anyone.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both of those polls also questioned Democrats about their preference. The results, shown in the charts below, are no surprise. Hillary Clinton is still the prohibitive favorite.
I'm surprised they haven't dug up Reagan and have him run again.
ReplyDelete