No matter how precise this poll is, it still tells you that the current GOP frontrunners are damaged goods, some of them hopelessly.
President Obama has shown what he is as President. He has so operated that at least 40% of the American public is never going to vote for him. He has shown what sort of leader he is, and that anyone who expects him to make a sharp turn and become very different lives in deep delusion.
The "generic Republican" is a Reagan-like nominee who has no obvious weaknesses of regional appeal. We already know that President Obama is going to lose severely among white people in the Deep South and in Appalachia and the Ozarks because he either offends their culture (he's black - whites in the Deep South) or can't relate to it (he's an egghead -- the "Upper South"). But he won big without those votes, anyway, and he could do so again in 2012.
President Obama is a known operating against unknowns. We all know his upper range in the vote, and it is probably an Eisenhower-scale win if he faces the weakest GOP nominee ever. He is definitely not Bill Clinton, who knows how to appeal to enough poor whites to win in much of the South. But look at the others.
Mitt Romney must do far better than John McCain in the Northeast to have a chance. I see Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico lost to the GOP because of large Mexican-American populations, so Romney must not only pick up Indiana and North Carolina (probably easy) but also Florida, Virginia, Ohio (not so easy if the economy is strong), and one of Iowa (which won't be enough if the GOP implodes in Arizona), Michigan, or Pennsylvania. Iowa went for Obama by nearly 10% in 2008 and Pennsylvania went for Obama by slightly more. Michigan probably has too many blacks to go Republican in 2012. To expect a Romney victory is to expect many things going right for the GOP.
Mike Huckabee might have better nationwide figures than Romney, but those are heavily concentrated in the South and near-South. Whether he wins Arkansas by 40% or 15% won't make a difference, and the same can be said of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. He probably takes Missouri completely off the table, but Obama won without it anyway. I have yet to see any indication that he could convince Northerners that he is any more relevant than John McCain. Worse yet, his "Willie Horton" killed some cops.
John Thune is a favorite among those betting on longshots, probably because people don't realize how long the odds are. He would be strong among the Religious Right, but the Religious Right is on the demographic fade as a political influence. Sure, Thune wins if he can win back the suburban vote that Obama won in 2008 that used to be reliably GOP, he is able to cut into Hispanic support for the President, and if the GOP does impressively in Congress, but that is asking for a lot. I see no evidence that he can parlay his successes in South Dakota into a nationwide victory for the simple reason that South Dakota is no microcosm of America. Anyone expecting John Thune to be a national campaigner asks for perhaps too much. Haley Barbour would be much the same, only with different cultural characteristics.
Rick Perry is just simply too nuts for much of America. He would win the states that nobody can conceive any Republican winning and the states that would never vote for a black person for a statewide or national office... which wouldn't be enough.
Mitch Daniels? There is no "Indiana miracle". Its economy is nearly in as bad shape as those of neighboring Michigan and Ohio.
Sarah Palin? She would wilt under a national campaign.
