Massachusetts voters despise former local bigwig

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You like me! You really like me! (Uh, no, not really.)

No, it's not an Onion headline. It's all quite real. Perhaps all too real for one Willard Mitt Romney.

According to a new PPP poll, the voters of one of Mitt's home states, the one of which he was a one-term governor, the one where I went to college... yes, that would be Massachusetts...

According to this poll, Massachusetts voters don't much care for Mitt. Obama's ahead 55-39. And that's not the end of the bad news for Mitt:

Romney does not have a good image in Massachusetts. Only 39% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 56% with a negative one. When they reflect on Romney's tenure as Governor, only 40% say they approve of the work he did to 46% who disapprove. That represents a downturn since 3 months ago when voters in the state approved of his time in office by a 48/40 spread, suggesting that the Obama's campaigns attacks on his tenure are having an impact.

Massachusetts voters don't even really regard Romney as one of their own despite his time as Governor -- only 25% say they consider him to be a Bay Stater, while 65% say they do not. There doesn't seem to be a state that wants to lay claim to Romney -- when we polled Michigan last month, only 24% of voters said they considered him to be one of their own to 65% who said they did not.

Now, Mitt (or any Republican in any presidential race) never really stood a chance in Massachusetts. Nationally at least, it's a solidly Democratic state.

But one might expect a former governor and one-time moderate, a business-oriented Republican, to be doing at least a little better there. Or at least to have a higher approval rating, to have a better reputation, to be more widely respected, to be more popular, more liked... even by Democrats.

But no. Not at all.

And so it seems, if you take how he's doing in Massachusetts and Michigan, two states that have had some experience with him, that the more people know of him the less they like. (Which is something Richard and I have been saying for a long time now.)

Of course, Utah knows him as well, what with his Mormonism and work on the Salt Lake Olympics, but that's a right-wing state, more to the right than Massachusetts is to the left, that would prefer any Republican to any Democrat (and likely any Mormon versus any non-Mormon). It doesn't refute the point, as it's an outlier.

Ultimately, the election will come down to swing states like Ohio and Virginia, not Massachusetts or, likely, Michigan. But what holds true in the latter two will likely hold in the former two. Romney will have a tough time overcoming himself, and voters, more and more, will not like what they see in him, from him, or about him.