Donald claimed that he did great in Super Tuesday. "Record turnouts," he claimed. "It's a movement," he assured us. He also called Romney a lightweight this week, adding the party's last presidential candidate to his list of people he's insulted.
So is Trump doing so much better than Romney did four years ago? Based on Super Tuesday, the answer would seem to be, "No." If there is a lightweight in the fight between Romney and Trump, it would seem to be Trump.
Simply put, Trump got 16% fewer votes than Clinton in the Super Tuesday states.
4 years ago, Romney won 40% more primary votes than Obama in these same states.
Although Trump and Clinton did not run against each other, they were each competing for votes in the same states. It's easy enough to compare their vote totals from Tuesday night.
Unsurprisingly, Trump won more primary votes in Tennessee and Alabama than Clinton. He won 36% more votes than Clinton in TN and 20% more in Alabama. While Romney got only 8% more votes than Obama in Ala, he got 75% more votes than Obama in TN. Here you could say that a slight edge goes to Romney.
But Romney also won more votes than Obama in Massachusetts, Arkansas, and Georgia. These were all states where Clinton won more votes than Trump on Tuesday. Here, the edge clearly goes to Romney.
Even though Sanders beat Clinton in Oklahoma, Clinton still won more votes there than Trump did. By contrast, Romney won more primary votes than Obama in OK in 2012.
Counting up the states from 2016's Super Tuesday (excluding Virginia, which wasn't a part of Super Tuesday in 2012) Romney won 32% more votes than Obama in 2012. By contrast, Clinton won 16% more than Trump. That's a big swing for states that show such strong Republican support.
Trump is doing considerably worse in 2016 than Romney did in 2012.
Will Trump win the general election? Maybe. But if he does, he'll win it in spite of performing more poorly than did the GOP's 2012 front-runner, a man who never did move into the White House.
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