Paul Hackett, who has dropped out of the race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination with his usual theatrical flourishes, says he quit the contest because of the pressure he claims he felt from national Democratic bigwigs.

That may well have been a factor in Hackett’s decision.

But it appears that an even bigger factor was a poll that showed Hackett trailing far behind his progressive primary opponent, U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown. With the filing deadline for the May Democratic primary rapidly approaching, Hackett was confronted with new numbers from his own pollster, which showed Brown was ahead among likely voters by an almost 2-1 margin — 46 percent for the congressman to 24 percent for Hackett.

Despite the fact that Hackett had been campaigning for the Senate seat since last fall — while Brown had been tied up in Washington leading the fight against the Central American Free Trade Agreement and other administration initiatives — the poll, details of which were obtained by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, revealed that Hackett had made few inroads among Democrats outside his southern Ohio base.

This is not to say that Hackett was a bad candidate.

An Iraq War veteran gained national attention with his blunt criticism of President Bush during the campaign for an Ohio U.S. House seat that he almost won in a special election last summer, Hackett would have been serious contender in a Senate race against just about anyone else. But Hackett had a hard time convincing most Ohio Democrats — particularly more liberal voters in the northern Ohio counties where the party is strongest — that he would be a bolder or better candidate than Brown, an early and consistently outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq who is one of the House’s leading foes of corporate excess.