Ned Lamont in Greenwich

TPM: The Enthusiasm Gap (0.00 / 0)

The Enthusiasm Gap: How Dispassionate Dems And Fired-Up GOPers Are Defining 2010
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...in a recent NBC/WSJ poll, the parties were split at 43% support when all adults surveyed were asked who they'd rather see in control of Congress next year. But when likely voters were asked the same question, the GOP took a nine-point lead. Polling from other firms this year has shown a similar result.

"We have two ways of looking at the enthusiasm gap: measuring whether voters are very, somewhat, or not at all excited about voting this fall, and then a step beyond that looking at how they voted for President in 2008," Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen told me when I asked him to explain how screenings of likely voters work. "We're consistently finding that very excited voters are going strongly toward the GOP while somewhat and not at all excited voters are supporting Democrats."

PPP, a Democratic-leaning pollster, has been right an awful lot this election season. And for now, Jensen says his numbers show that the people who say they really want to vote are planning to vote for the GOP. "Of course it doesn't really matter whether you're excited or not if you actually show up and vote," he said. "[It] counts just the same. But that's why we ask people how they voted in 2008 -- to get a sense of how those planning to vote this year match up to who voted last time."

Jensen says his polls show "about a 6-point shift in a Republican direction in who's coming out this time." (For the number-types out there, Jensen illustrates the concept like so: "If a state voted for Obama by four points in 2008, this year's voters are likely to have voted for John McCain by two points, and so forth.")

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Real-world results show this boost in enthusiasm among Republicans is no fluke. As the New York Daily News' Michael McAuliff reports, "turnout in Republican primaries is exceeding (by a lot!) Democratic turnout for the first time since 1930." McAuliff cites a report showing "a 4.2 million-vote edge for Republicans." For contrast: "before the 2006 general election, Dems had about a 3 million-vote lead," he writes, "and look how well that served them." (The TPM Poll Average shows Republicans leading in congressional generic ballot surveys 47.3-40.7. The tracker includes registered and likely voter surveys.)

The shift means many Democrats are running in a world very different from the one Obama did in 2008. The president hasn't done a great job solidifying the supporters he won over two years ago, leaving candidates struggling in a 2010 environment in which the pool of likely voters might have very well elected John McCain president in 2008.

"Obama has won over basically no one to the Democrats since he took office," Jensen said. "He hasn't actually lost that many people either."

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It will be interesting to see how voter turnout plays out in CT this November.  Democratic apathy happens when our Democratic leaders cater to corporate welfare at the expense of the needs of ordinary voters.  Bailing out the banks but letting the unemployed starve doesn't sell well in an election year, and watching Dem leaders cave in or be out maneuvered by the Republican minority is depressing.

I'd hate to see a t-shirt on an Obama political cartoon that says, "All I got for my tax cuts was a Republican controlled Congress!" If that happens, Obama and the Dem leaders are primarily responsible for that.

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by: Larkspur @ Mon Sep 13, 2010 at 14:46:31 PM UTC