Enthusiasms. Enthusiasms: Conservative Voters Much More Enthusiastic About Midterms Than Liberals

Pollsters cannot account for this phenomenon, but they're 99% sure it's due to hate.

Sweet, sweet warming hate. Like a shot of good whiskey, or the joyful frisson one feels after setting fire to an immigrant's convenience store.

Also, young voters aren't very enthusiastic this year.

The fact that voters under age 50 -- and particularly those under 30 -- are less enthusiastic about voting this year is not a new phenomenon; voter turnout typically skews older. The current data, based on Gallup Daily tracking conducted April 1-25, confirm that so far, 2010 provides no exception to this traditional pattern.

...

Gallup Daily tracking data reinforce the value of younger voters for the Democrats, showing that 18- to 29-year-olds favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate in their local districts by a 12-point margin. In contrast, the Republican candidate is on top among all groups of voters aged 30 and older.

This is several days old by now, but Gallup finds the narrowest partisan gap since 2005 -- just one point of difference, obliterating the Democrats' 10-12 point advantage between 2006 and 2008.

The six-point rise in Republican support since the first quarter of 2009 is due entirely to a growing proportion of independents who lean to the Republican Party, rather than an increase in the percentage of Americans who identify as Republicans outright. (Gallup measures party identification by first asking Americans whether they identify as Republicans, Democrats, or independents. Those who are independent or express no party preference are then asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or the Republican Party.)

In fact, the 28% of Americans who initially identify as Republicans today is identical to the figure Gallup measured in early 2009, when the Democrats still had a double-digit advantage in support. Since then, there has been a three-point reduction in the proportion of Democratic identifiers, and a three-point decline in the percentage of Democratic-leaning independents.

To some extent, then, this represents simply conservative-tilting voters coming home after going crazy on acid for the 2006 and 2008 elections. Still, you need to get back what you had before you can think about getting more.

posted by Ace at 02:10 PM

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