Can Romney win back independents?
For months, one of Mitt Romney's strongest arguments in the race for the Republican presidential nomination has been his electability. Even as his GOP rivals slammed Romney for being a "Massachusetts moderate," Republican voters largely supported him because they believed he had the best chances of beating President Obama in the fall.
A series of polls in recent weeks, however, has undercut Romney's selling point: He's losing ground not only with Republican voters, but also with independents, a group that's key to winning a general election. The challenge for the former governor now is to deflect attacks that have hurt him with both voting blocs -- and he may have the opportunity to remind voters of his strengths as the focus now turns to his GOP rival Rick Santorum.
"So far, the Republican race isn't about Rick Santorum, it's about Romney," political analyst Stuart Rothenberg told Hotsheet. "He's just getting beaten up all over the place."
But once Santorum starts getting more attention, Rothenberg said, it will be clear that "for people who value electability, [Romney's] still the only game in town. He's got the best campaign, the most funding and potentially the most appeal to independents."
Still, after several weeks of a brutal primary campaign, the damage will be hard to recover from.
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"Romney's appeal has not been an ideological one, it's been the, 'I'm the electable one,'" said Norm Ornstein, a political scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "Now that he's lost a slew of contests and a majority of Republicans aren't just that into him, the electability appeal is waning. A lot of those problems are not going to go away with independents if he wins [the primary]."
If Romney wins the nomination, his general election campaign will depend largely on the level of antipathy there is toward Mr. Obama, Ornstein said.
Meanwhile, Santorum -- who exceeded expectations by winning the last three nominating contests -- is now arguing that he can win over moderates and independents by generating enthusiasm, rather than relying on resentment against the president.
"We always talk about how are we gonna get the moderates," Santorum said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last weekend. "Why would an undecided voter vote for the candidate that the party's not excited about? We need conservatives to rally for a conservative, to pull with that excitement moderate voters, and to defeat Barack Obama in the fall."
At this point, the polls seem to back up Santorum's argument.
A new CBS News/ New York Times poll released Tuesday evening shows Santorum with a slight lead over Romney among Republicans nationally. It also shows that as Romney's support among Republicans falters, his independent support is also waning, as is his competitiveness against Mr. Obama.
In January, in a head-to-head match up against the president, Romney won the support of 46 percent of independent voters, while Mr. Obama won just 38 percent. Now, those numbers are flipped -- Romney wins just 37 percent support from independents and Mr. Obama wins 46 percent. On top of that, Santorum wins a slightly larger share of the independent vote when pitted against Mr. Obama -- he takes 39 percent of the independent vote to Mr. Obama's 46 percent.
The CBS News/ New York Times poll is just the latest survey to show independents turning away from Romney. A Washington Post poll released three weeks ago showed Romney's negative image with independent voters jumped 17 points in a matter of weeks. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from late January similarly showed that the percentage of independent voters with a negative view of Romney jumped by 20 points in the span of two months. And Monday, a Pew Research Center survey showed Romney losing among independents in a match-up against the president, even though he won the independent vote in a November survey.
The Pew survey shows the results of the bruising primary battle: Fewer independents believe Romney is honest and trustworthy, and fewer independents say he's well-qualified to be president.
Romney's rivals and their supporters have attacked his character, his stance on issues like abortion and his stint as the head of Bain Capital.
"When that happens, it's not unusual for a candidate's favorability ratings to slide and voters to become more skeptical," Rothenberg said.
But Ornstein said it's not just his rivals' attacks doing the damage -- Romney has also suffered self-inflicted wounds.
"Romney can't speak out in any way outside of an orchestrated setting without putting his foot in his mouth," he said. The candidate, he said, suffers from an "obtuseness to the problems of everyday Americans, a stiffness, and you get the sense he doesn't really have principles or stand for anything."
While Romney has miffed voters and pundits alike with his gaffes, like his $10,000 bet during a debate, Santorum has managed to play up his humble beginnings.
"[Santorum] starts with a greater ability to resonate with working class, white voters," Ornstein added, "a group that's been leaning more and more towards Republicans and that gave them a big part of their edge in 2010."
Those voters -- who once may have been referred to as Reagan Democrats -- would be critical for a general election candidate in states like Ohio. The question is whether Santorum can keep their support once they learn of his strong conservative positions on social issues, or his far-right economic agenda, which calls for cutting $5 trillion from the federal budget in five years.
The CBS/ New York Times poll does show that Santorum is still largely an unknown quantity. Voters who have an opinion of the former senator are divided, though nearly half don't know enough to form an opinion.
"There's a reason why Democrats think he'd be an easy target," Rothenberg said.
