The majority of media attention in the 2012 Republican nomination contest is (rightly so) on the current race among Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul, but it's also instructive to compare Romney to another candidate: himself, circa 2008.

 

In the battle of "Romney vs. Romney," who has performed better? At present, this year’s Romney is struggling to match the vote shares his counterpart posted four years ago, as Romney 2012 has bested Romney 2008 in just 10 of19* contests (52.6%) thus far.  In the remaining nine states, Romney 2008 garnered the larger share of the vote.

* Mitt Romney ended his campaign four years ago on February 7, 2008. In our overall count, we eliminate states that held their primaries or caucuses after this date. In some, Romney did not appear on the ballot, while in others, he did not wage an active campaign. Of the 33 states that have voted thus far in 2012, 12 meet this criteria. Another two—Wyoming and Hawaii—did not hold or report preference votes in 2008; instead, the Republican Party selected delegates to represent the state at the convention. As such, Romney’s total is out of 19, not 33.

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