First the fun aspect. Romney has a 45.9% favorable impression, and 64% of the voters say that they don’t know enough about him to give him a rating.
In other words, at least 18.1% of the population feels favorable about him they even when they admit they don’t know enough about him to give him a fair rating. The only other figures in the poll with similar disconnects are Sen. Bayh (D-IN), and Gov. Richardson (D-NM).
For Bayh and Richardson, they’re likely enjoying the association of being Democrats at the moment. (which was mentioned in the poll if I read it right). So voters at least know which side they’re on.
Romney is actually working against party labels, so I’d have to consider this haze of favorability to mainly come from his rep in 2002 SLC. Additionally, he may have some folks with long memories liking him because of his Dad, so he continues to benefit from this benevolent ignorance (an ingredient of Republican success if I ever heard one). Other thoughts and theories?
I believe you are looking at the Quinnipiac numbers incorrectly.
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The “45.9” Romney gets is not a favorability percentage but rather the average score (from a scale of 0-100) given to the political figure by the survey respondents. The 64% of voters not giving Romney a rating would, therefore, not be averaged into the score.
Would explain a lot….what I get for tryingto blog during lunch… Thanks.
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Still don’t like Romney, though.
Matt Stoller on MyDD has an excellent analysis indicating that the favorability versus unfavorability ratings were poor predictors of the outcomes of the Senate races. Voters gave high negatives to Burns and Santorum, but Burns lost narrowly and Santorum hugely. Similarly, Chafee and Allen continued to be seen favorably but lost.
I don’t think fav/unfav numbers mean much as a predictor. Barack’s unfavorables are high mainly because he’s adored by the press at the moment, and nobody knows much about him.
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Heck, you see it on the football field — NFL players are often “favorable” to each other, helping someone on the opposing team get up off the turf after having slammed them into it. But given that I totally misread the numbers, my post doesn’t have much of a point to it in any case.