Romney's Handicap

I mentioned in my last post that each different Republican candidate appears to give Obama a certain 'handicap' in his re-election bid. That is to say, you can roughly think that every change of 1 point in Obama's net approval rating will cause a 1-point change (in the same direction, obviously) in his margins over his Republican opponents. But for each different opponent, there's a different calibration. In one poll Obama might lead Romney by 3 points, Perry by 8, and Palin by 17, all obviously with the same approval rating. So each candidate is giving him a different handicap. I thought I'd take a look at trying to quantify the Romney handicap.


I looked at the most recent statewide head-to-head poll from the 34 states where PublicPolicyPolling has surveyed at least once since the beginning of 2011. Then, obviously, I looked at the difference between Obama's approval rating and his margin against Mitt Romney. I could only do this for Romney, because the Republican field keeps changing so quickly that other candidates are having trouble staying on the ballot in these surveys for very long. Anyway, here's what I found. The Romney Handicap ranges from a whopping 18 points in West Virginia to negative 2 points in Georgia. It's at 13 points in Iowa and Nebraska, 12 points in Wisconsin, 11 in Colorado, 10 in Ohio and North Carolina, 9 in Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Texas, 8 in Minnesota, California, and Oregon, 7 in Vermont, 6 in Florida and Missouri, 5 in New Jersey and Virginia, 4 in Nevada, 3 in Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Montana, 2 in Pennsylvania and Washington, 1 point in Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Dakota, and New Mexico, 0 points in South Carolina and Arizona, and -1 points in Connecticut and Utah. In the most recent national PPP poll, Obama had a -6 approval rating and fought Romney to a draw, suggesting a 6-point handicap. The median handicap of the state polls is 5 points; the average handicap is 5.44 points. So, we're looking at something like an average of 5-6 points, nationally.

That's not a small handicap. It suggests that Obama will beat Romney if his national approval rating is four points negative. At the same time, it's a lot smaller than the handicaps that Sarah Palin was routinely giving Obama back when she was in these polls. And it suggests that, if pollster.com's average is right, Romney's probably slightly ahead of him nationally. But it still tells you that Romney's not a strong candidate. You'd like to think that a really strong candidate could actually give the incumbent President a negative handicap, right? Or at least hold things to a straight-up referendum on the President. But it looks like Romney can't quite manage that.

There's one caveat that I'd add, though. The five most recent state polls that PPP has conducted were Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. Those were five of the eight states with the highest handicaps for Romney, and his three worst states. The range of the Romney handicap in these states was from 9 points (Massachusetts) to 18 points (West Virginia), with 13-point handicaps in Iowa and Nebraska and a 10-point spread in North Carolina. Perhaps the handicap that Romney is spotting Obama has increased recently. I'm not too sure about this yet, especially because the Connecticut poll showing Romney with a -1 point handicap was very shortly before those five in which he was much weaker, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on. Increasing the Romney handicap has got to be the Obama re-election team's #1 priority, and #1 re-election strategy. (Connecticut's in New England, too, where Romney seems to perform better, so maybe that one was anomalous. Only future polling data will tell!)

UPDATE: A new West Virginia poll, only a month after the previous one (the frequency being because of the special gubernatorial election, which the Democrat won), shows Obama's position deteriorating. His net approval rating slipped from -30 to -35, while his margin against Romney slipped from -12 to -21. That brings the Romney Handicap in West Virginia down from an absurd 18 to a still-the-highest-in-the-nation 14. So far, nothing to dis-confirm my observation that it looks like the Romney Handicap is trending upwards.