Corrected for "the calendar," Mittens running 4-6% better than McCain in 2008

[Bacon King]

Gustaf is correct that the article gives Romney the wrong percentage in Tennessee; it also probably shouldn't be comparing Wyoming 2008 (just county GOP leaders picking delegates) with Wyoming 2012 (it included a straw poll this time).

Excluding those two, it's worth noting that out of the nine states listed where Romney 2012 beat McCain's 2008 vote share, Romney reduced his own portion of the vote share between 2008 and 2012 in four of those states. And among the five states where he performed better than both himself and McCain did in 2008, he hasn't won more delegates from any of them this cycle than the he or McCain did last time (i.e., whichever of the two got more delegates from each state in 2008, not their combined total).

[Bacon King]

At least one data point is wrong - Romney only got 28% in Tennessee, not 38%.

But, yeah, I think that makes sense. Both Romney and McCain were weak frontrunners.

You can't really compare Romney and McCain here. Romney has never not been considered the frontrunner. McCain had made a major comeback to win most of the early states.

I think that going into NH, Romney was considered the frontrunner in reality.  After NH, he lost that status.

Giuliani was the frontrunner before McCain. Romney was actually polling fourth place nationally throughout the first two weeks of 2008 (source)