WASHINGTON (By Charlie Cook, National Journal) November 28, 2006 — The Republican who has helped himself enormously over the last year has been Romney, but has not yet laid out a vision of where he would take the party if nominated or the country if elected.

The question facing Romney's candidacy is whether his Mormon faith is a problem in securing the GOP nomination, or for that matter, winning a general election. As a Catholic, Sen. John Kennedy certainly faced and beat that challenge in his 1960 presidential campaign, and Sen. Joe Lieberman did as the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, on a ticket that won the national popular vote and came within 500 votes in Florida of winning the Electoral College. Some argue that Romney can succeed as well, while others point out that he has many fewer co-religionists than did Kennedy or Lieberman, and overcoming that challenge will be more difficult.

While there is certainly no way to reliably test the impact Romney's faith would have on his candidacy — after all, few voters will concede that they will not vote for a candidate based on race, gender or religion — one way of getting an approximate measurement is to ask people how their friends, neighbors and relatives would respond to such a question. In this most recent Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll, all 1,735 registered voters were asked the following question:

"As you may know, Mitt Romney is a Mormon who is currently governor of Massachusetts. If the Republican Party nominated Mitt Romney for president, regardless of how you personally might vote, how likely is it that among your friends, neighbors or relatives there might be some people who choose not to vote for Romney because he is Mormon?"

Forty-three percent chose the option of "not likely at all," while another 24 percent picked "only somewhat likely," for a total of 67 percent. Thirteen percent said "very likely" and another eight percent chose "fairly likely," for a total of 21 percent.

Interestingly, the one in five who seemed to think that Romney's faith was a deal-breaker and the two-thirds who said it wouldn't be didn't vary as much by party as one might think. Among both Republicans and independents, 19 percent in each case picked either the "very likely" or "fairly likely" options and 23 percent of Democrats chose that course. Among Republicans, 71 percent picked either only "somewhat" or "not likely," while 70 percent of independents and 64 percent of Democrats chose one of those.

Indeed there was surprisingly little variation between the 40 subgroups tested, and the only ones that varied on the combined "very likely/fairly likely" group more than five points one way or the other were blacks (38 percent) and likely Democratic primary voters (26 percent).

With this poll showing that, among registered Republicans and Republican presidential primary voters as well as independents and swing voters, the very likely/fairly likely number is under 20 percent, and the only groups that jumped high were those highly unlikely to vote for any Republican, it's possible that Romney's challenge may be lesser than some have warned. As the campaign becomes more engaged, it will become more apparent whether these numbers hold up.