One of the chief reasons the media is so mistaken in their zeal to proclaim Obama the election winner is that most of the polls they’re basing their predictions on are wildly inflating Democrat turnout. The overwhelming majority of media polls are an assuming an electorate that is at least as Democrat as the one in 2008, with many polls assuming a higher Democrat turnout. This is just daft. The latest CBS poll of 3 swing states is the most recent to show that GOP has a huge turnout advantage over Democrats.
Yesterday, CBS/NYT released its latest Quinnipiac poll of Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin. With the exception of CO, the polls had heavy Democrat skews, so the head-to-head match-ups aren’t particularly informative. What was telling though was the differences in enthusiasm between the two parties.
In all three states, a majority of Republicans say they are more enthusiastic about voting this year, compared to about a third of Democrats who are. In Colorado and Virginia, GOP voters are more enthusiastic than Democrats by a 15 point margin. In Wisconsin, GOP enthusiasm outpaces Democrats by 16 points.
Particularly interesting is that GOP voters have become more enthusiastic about voting in the past month. GOP enthusiasm has increased 9 points in CO, 10 points in WI and 12 points in VA. Democrat enthusiasm, meanwhile has increased only modestly; 5 points in VA, 4 in WI and 10 in CO (from a very low 28% of Democrats who were more enthusiastic about voting).
If these trends continue, today’s head-to-head numbers will be wildly off base, as the electorate this November will be very different than the one that voted in 2008.
Keep in mind, GOP voters in these swing states have become more enthusiastic about voting in the midst of a weeks-long assault on Romney by the Democrat-media industrial complex. Since the beginning of the Democrat convention, the media have reported that Obama was surging, Romney was flailing, and the election was all but over. And yet, GOP voting enthusiasm increased.
The media reports of the death of the Romney campaign are not just exaggerated, they are flights of fantasy made up from whole cloth. GOP voters are clearly ready to rumble this fall.