Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are gearing up to be major competitors in the Republican presidential primary race. And as it turns out, the two of them have something in common: According to new surveys from Public Policy Polling (D), they would both lose their respective home states to President Obama by serious margins — though as the new numbers from Massachusetts show, it’s much worse in Romney’s case.
In the new Massachusetts survey, Obama leads Romney by a landslide margin of 57%-37% — wider than the 51%-43% margin that Obama has over Pawlenty in Minnesota, and comparable to Obama’s 56%-35% lead over the other likely Minnesotan candidate, Michele Bachmann, in that state.
As it turns out, Romney is actually the strongest Republican candidate in Massachusetts. Obama leads Herman Cain by 60%-27%, leads Newt Gingrich by 63%-27%, leads Sarah Palin by 63%-27%, and leads Pawlenty by 59%-28%.
It should be noted, of course, that Massachusetts is even more Democratic than Minnesota, having voted for Barack Obama by a 62%-36% margin in 2008, compared to Obama’s 54%-44% margin in Minnesota.
PPP’s Tom Jensen writes: “I’m sure no one was in a lot of suspense about whether Obama would win Massachusetts next year. The bigger question is if an Obama win by 20 points against Romney…or by 30 points or more against someone else…will be enough to carry Scott Brown’s eventual Democratic challenger over the top.”
PPP numbers for the Senate released on Tuesday, taken from this same polling data set, showed Brown leading all Democrats tested against him. However, as the presidential numbers show, once the actual campaign commences he will have to work to court as many ticket-splitters as he can find.
The survey of registered voters was conducted from June 2-5, and has a ±3.2% margin of error.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.