Cloning would be worse!
Cloning creates identical people with identical DNA. Identical DNA, identical defects, repeated over and over through the colony of twins, triplets, etc…
But it’s a small margin of improvement. Both cases, if the population pool is too small, you’ll eventually end up with sterility, severe mutations, and very early deaths, end of colony within a few generations.
Darn it! I managed a full half year of not thinking about another play through of Skyrim!