I’m really not sure the casual political observer completely understands how central the enthusiasm gap is to the dreadful poll numbers for Democrats. It’s not that the country has undergone a sea change politically since 2008. It’s that when pollsters screen for who is likely to vote come November the pool they wind up with is markedly more conservative than it was two years ago. It’s also far more conservative than a comparable sample of registered votes would be.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that screening for likely voters is flawed. It’s a tried and true method pollsters use to get a more precise read on the subset of people who say they will actually vote. But if you think of the electoral process as a continuum with blank-slate citizen at one end and actively involved voter on the other end, the trouble spot for Democrats is somewhere in the middle, that point at which political awareness congeals into political action. The hurdle Democrats haven’t been able to surmount isn’t so much in communicating to voters; rather, it’s in engaging the portion of the citizenry that’s inclined to favor Democrats anyway. Or at least they haven’t succeeded nearly as well as Republicans have with their own half of the citizenry.
I should also point out that this much more conservative than average likely voter pool is what’s giving tea party candidates like Christine O’Donnell, the tea party candidate in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Delaware, a leg up in Republican primary elections (see also, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, etc.). Here’s how Public Policy Polling describes their latest findings in the Delaware race, where O’Donnell has pulled ahead of the more moderate Rep. Mike Castle:
Castle has an overwhelming 69-21 lead with moderate voters but they only make up 33% of the likely primary electorate. O’Donnell has a 62-31 lead with conservatives that’s more than enough to propel her to the overall lead.
With this enthusiasm defining the 2010 elections, Evan McMorris-Santoro takes a close look at what it means and how it manifests itself.
