The Enthusiasm Gap

All these polls are nice but, as the old cliché goes, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. So which candidate has the upper hand on excited, motivated voters? Read this and weep, Bob Shrum:

Forget the gender gap. The chasm that yawns the widest this election year is the Enthusiasm Gap.

Nearly two in three likely voters who support President Bush -- 65 percent -- said they were "very enthusiastic" about their candidate while 42 percent of Sen. John F. Kerry's supporters express similarly high levels of enthusiasm for their choice, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

That's a 23-point difference in relative excitement. Although the polling record is incomplete for earlier elections, the available data suggest that the enthusiasm gap in the 2000 presidential campaign was negligible, at best.

To put this another way: Bush’s poll numbers = floor. Kerry’s poll numbers = ceiling.