That’s untrue. It’s often not even a question of knowing a lot about a candidate, but rather of simple name recognition. Polls between a “known” and and “unknown” will be very different from polls taken once the “unknown” becomes “known.” People don’t tend to indicate a preference in polls for candidates whose names they don’t recognize. A substantial percentage of those polled knew Rudy, McCain, Obama, Hillary, and possibly Edwards, but that’s about where the list ended for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, your arguments are the same as those of the liberals in the GOP establishment. I don’t mean to imply that you are one of them, but simply to observe that we can all fall into the trap of trusting the wrong talking points.
As Romney has become better known over the past year, his unfavorables have gone UP.
So has the percentage of the population that says it definitely will not vote for him. That’s now at 47%.. hardly promising.
Nor is he as unknown as you think. With 42% saying they have a favorable opinion of him and 48% unfavorable, only 10% failed to express an opinion of him to Ras.