President Barack Obama has been leading his opponent Mitt Romney in most polls and stats-geek (I mean that in a good way), Nate Silver of 538.com, is giving Obama a 76.3% chance of winning the election in November. Yet it seems like almost once a day, I either hear or read via a major media outlet that Republican voters are more enthused about this year's election than Democratic ones and/or that Democrats aren't as enthused as they were for the 2008 election.
This is nothing new. It is very common for the party that has been out of power in the Oval Office to be the more pumped up of the two parties. This happens almost every time. After two terms of Democrat Bill Clinton, what happened? Let's not forget that Clinton had a pretty high approval rating, especially during his second term. Yet after he held office for 8 years, the Republican voters were more geared up to get a Republican in there to replace him and they did that with George W. Bush. After 8 years of Bush, again, what happened? Democratic voters were the more enthused of the two and wound up electing Barack Obama president over John McCain.
Whichever party's candidate gets elected, he or she typically has a significant number of promises which to keep and it's nearly impossible for all those promises to be kept. Due to this, some voters will be disappointed with the first term and not be as pumped to vote him or her in for a second term. On the other side, however - they haven't seen their party in power for 4 (or more) years and haven't been disappointed by broken promises, so within them is a hope, optimism and with that, enthusiasm to vote their candidate into office. These are the same feelings the other side felt and experienced 4 (or more) years prior. This "voter enthusiasm gap" is nothing new. It's cyclical and should stop being treated by the media as an earth-shattering event.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
This is nothing new. It is very common for the party that has been out of power in the Oval Office to be the more pumped up of the two parties. This happens almost every time. After two terms of Democrat Bill Clinton, what happened? Let's not forget that Clinton had a pretty high approval rating, especially during his second term. Yet after he held office for 8 years, the Republican voters were more geared up to get a Republican in there to replace him and they did that with George W. Bush. After 8 years of Bush, again, what happened? Democratic voters were the more enthused of the two and wound up electing Barack Obama president over John McCain.
Whichever party's candidate gets elected, he or she typically has a significant number of promises which to keep and it's nearly impossible for all those promises to be kept. Due to this, some voters will be disappointed with the first term and not be as pumped to vote him or her in for a second term. On the other side, however - they haven't seen their party in power for 4 (or more) years and haven't been disappointed by broken promises, so within them is a hope, optimism and with that, enthusiasm to vote their candidate into office. These are the same feelings the other side felt and experienced 4 (or more) years prior. This "voter enthusiasm gap" is nothing new. It's cyclical and should stop being treated by the media as an earth-shattering event.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
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