There's been a lot of talk about Donald Trump's unfavorable ratings in the polls and what that means for the November election, but apparently neither Mitt Romney or his former running mate and current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan would perform much better.
The latest poll from Public Policy Polling, one of the more accurate pollsters, finds that Romney has a terrible favorability rating and Paul Ryan would also lose badly to whoever the Democratic nominee is.
There's been a lot of talk about Republicans possibly nominating Romney or Ryan at a contested convention, but both under perform a generic Republican candidate. Romney is incredibly unpopular nationally now- his 23/65 favorability rating is even worse than the 29/63 Trump comes in at. Clinton (45/32) and Sanders (48/31) each lead Romney by double digit margins. Ryan would trail Clinton 44/39 and Sanders 45/38, numbers not terribly dissimilar to how Trump polls against each of them. It's not clear Romney or Ryan would do much to save the party this year.
What's so remarkable about these numbers to me is that Democrats haven't really unloaded on any of their potential 2016 opponents, meaning the current numbers do not reflect what they will look like after Democratic trackers spend 6 months destroying them.
It's not clear where the basement is for Trump's favorability but I suspect we haven't seen the bottom yet.
The GOP has no realistic or particularly favorable alternatives to Donald Trump. Even John Kasich is beginning to sink in public opinion polls and he has no chance of becoming the nominee.