Fall Out Boy

Neil links to a chart showing head-to-head Missouri polling numbers for a few Presidential candidates: Clinton, Edwards, and Obama for the D's, and Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney for the Elephant. Klein picks up on how Edwards beats all three by wider margins than either of the other two candidates.

But what intrigues me is how far behind Romney is compared to Thompson. Against Clinton and Obama, he's a eight points further behind compared to Thompson, against Edwards that jumps to 14.

I had always assumed that Romney's weakness compared to Giuliani (and perhaps McCain) in early head-to-head match-ups was name recognition: he was essentially "generic Republican," and generic Republicans are not doing so hot right now. But I can't think that Thompson has that much greater name ID (even with Law & Order), and yet he's got far better match-up numbers than Romney does. This would imply that there are some voters who do know Romney and are simply less likely to vote for him than they are other Republican candidates (rather than a simple name ID problem). This, to put it mildly, is not good news for either the Romney campaign or the Republican Party for whom he still strikes me as the most likely nominee.