Sept. 12: Polls Since Conventions Point to Decline in ‘Enthusiasm Gap’

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/sept-12-polls-since-conventions-point-to-decline-in-enthusiasm-gap/

Nate Silver

"Why did President Obama get a bounce in the polls following the Democratic convention?

Part of it may simply be one of the functions that conventions have long served: to motivate voters who are generally loyal to the party, but who had been paying only marginal attention to the race.

At FiveThirtyEight, we measure the “enthusiasm gap” between the parties in a particular way. Specifically, we watch for cases in which pollsters report results among both the broader universe of registered voters, and the narrower one of likely voters. If one candidate’s supporters are more likely to vote, that candidate will do better in the likely-voter polls than the registered-voter ones.

Typically, the candidate who benefits from the comparison is the Republican. Republican voters tend to be older, whiter and wealthier, all characteristics that correlate with a greater propensity to vote.

snip

Long article, interesting read, reinforces the need to push GOTV efforts!