Today, Gallup released a poll, not of the horse race but of the demographics of the electorate. The headline is “2012 Electorate Looks Like 2008”, but that buries the important difference. While the gender, racial, age and education characteristics are about the same, party identification has changed radically:
Basically, Republican vs Democrat is about +1 Republican; include leaners and that’s +3 Republican.
Gallup’s “horserace” poll of likely voters has Romney 50 percent Obama 47 46 percent. However, as Bob Krumm noted on Wednesday, the “likely voter” screens are very, er, liberal, and are probably including a fair number of people who won’t actually vote.
Rasmussen, by the way, has 50/47 Romney again today.
One more interesting point: several polls have now shown Republican enthusiasm much higher than Democrat, in fact at all all-time high. What this would imply is a greater likelihood that Republican and leaning-Republican voters will actually make it to the polls. And that in turn suggests the actual vote may be significantly more Republican than the polls are showing. This could be shaping up to be a Reaganesque landslide.
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