A quick follow-up to today's post on the Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP poll, while you're on the edge of your seat waiting for Wisconsin results and a bonanza of additional primary contests today.
The poll asked "Does Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital make you more or less likely to vote for him, or does it not make a difference?" and also "Do Mitt Romney’s ties to Donald Trump make you more or less likely to vote for him, or does it not make a difference?"
Now, I suspect most people who answer questions like this by saying it does make them more or less likely to vote one way or another are just hard-core partisans registering their pleasure/displeasure with the issue at hand. But thankfully we've got the raw data at hand to take a look at those who aren't hard-core partisans.
First, those who say they are undecided in who they will vote for for President. What do they think of Bain and Trump? Well, there's only 70 of them. So the margin of error is around plus or minus 12 points at 50%. But heck, let's see what we see... (all numbers from results after weighting by age).
Bain: 28% less likely, 7% more likely
Trump: 43% less likely, 8% more likely
Bain OR Trump: 51% less likely, 15% more likely
Bain AND Trump: 20% less likely, 1% more likely
It's pretty clear that Romney's ties to Bain and Trump hurt him among undecided voters. About half of undecided voters say they are less likely to vote for him because of his ties to either Bain or Trump. That seems pretty important.
What about weak Romney voters? Can they be peeled away with these issues? One way to define these voters is people who say they'll vote for Romney but also say they have an unfavorable opinion of Romney or they're not sure. There's 63 of these people in the poll.
Bain: 20% less likely, 14% more likely
Trump: 16% less likely, 17% more likely
Bain OR Trump: 34% less likely, 30% more likely
Bain AND Trump: 4% less likely, 6% more likely
That's essentially a draw. So these issues don't really help pull away weak Romney supporters, but don't really hurt either.
Bain and Trump are two issues that undecideds don't like about Romney, but that are a wash with weak Romney supporters. No wonder we've been hearing a lot about them.