I was going to do a post about how the Mitt Romney who's running for president in 2012 has never really won a general election before, since the Mitt Romney who was elected governor in 2002 doesn't bear any resemblance to the current model. The Romney who won in Massachusetts was a pragmatic, non-ideological reform candidate who promised to serve as a check on the state's overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. He promised to keep taxes down, but he also telegraphed that he would do little or nothing to reverse the state's liberal laws on enviromental protection and on social issues like gay rights and abortion.
And as my post-election analysis for CommonWealth, I pointed out that Romney essentially won by doing well in affluent, highly educated and socially liberal suburbs. He didn't run as strongly in the smaller, economically struggling cities of Massachusetts — the kind of place that the national GOP is now counting on for anti-Obama votes.
My bright idea was to look at the 2002 exit polls to see how Romney did among the various demographic groups that will be important in the 2012 presidential elections. Alas, I found this:
I forgot that the national consortium that conducted exit polls had a meltdown in 2002 and never released any data. So we don't know how the Massachusetts Romney (let alone the current Romney) does among women, Catholics, the under-30 set, etc. when they actually have to choose between him and a Democratic candidate. It will be interesting to find out!
We do know, however, that Rick Santorum can win the white Protestant vote even he loses overall by 18 points.
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