Americans To Romney: We Might Like You

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The word tortoise has been thrown around in the media lately as a way to describe former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney’s position in the GOP Presidential primary. He’s consistent. Slow and steady, and maybe that’s enough, goes the theory.

For Democrats, that theory has the opposite meaning. “We’ve had Romney and an un-Romney in a variety of iterations throughout this campaign,” Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said Wednesday during an interview with CNN’s John King. “Michele Bachmann filled the role for a while, Rick Perry soared to the top and when he came down to earth, Cain took his place. Romney sits there at 23 percent, 24 percent of the vote in all these polls and the question is why aren’t they buying Mitt Romney?”

After all, Axlerod pointed out, Romney has been running for six years. And perhaps that’s exactly why they are hitting him — he’s the only candidate that seems to be improving his standing with the American people at the moment.

Take a look at the TPM Poll Average of Romney’s favorability rating over the last year and a half plus. Not much has changed. Slight variations have followed the pace of the race itself: Romney maintained a slightly positive rating until the start of this summer when GOP voters started trying out other candidates, in went underwater for a bit as he lost his frontrunner status, and over the last few weeks it’s perked up as he’s had a run of good debate performances.

The number that really jumps out is the latest from the AP/GfK national poll. In mid-August, 39 percent of Americans had unfavorable view of the former MA Gov. versus 41 percent who had a negative one. Now a near majority, 49 percent, have a favorable view and only 37 percent see him unfavorably. His numbers are perking up as winter — and the first votes in the primary season are cast — approaches.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has had the opposite problem. Our analysis below shows an incredible forking of support in the wrong direction among general election voters.

This month’s frontrunner, Herman Cain, has actually recovered from a negative rating earlier in the year to a slightly positive one, and GOP voters themselves are major fans of the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO. But the trend also shows Cain’s rating has had much more volatility.

And as TPM pointed out Wednesday in video form, another change may be on the way. So perhaps we’re looking at yet another pass of the GOP torch from Un-Romney, to Mitt Romney, and back to square one.

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