Older voters, and old here probably loosely meaning 'over 40' just tends to think more about down-ticket and show up to vote even if they loathe the whole pack of prominent, out of force of habit, out of worry who will make Trustee, council, school board, etc, out of the knowledge someone they know will call up and be like 'Dorothy said you didn't come by the poll and we was worried' especially out in the country where the old ladies manning the precinct polling table really do know the life history of almost everyone who walks in the door. I'm sure a lot of it is general psychology by ideology but a lot is probably just age and the tendency for the GOP to have more of the older demographic proportionately.



Oh very, in the current GOP climate, in my area anyway, people (other than Paul supporters who are mostly younger) don't actually care much who wins the primary personally and conversation mostly goes 'Well I hope it's Romney because...' w/ "I want this race over" or "He seems like he has a better organization", there are doubtless tons of exceptions but I think on the whole there's a decided enthusiasm gap between the parties, and "I'll vote for anyone except Satan over Obama... and maybe him too" going around this year but it's not really much of an abnormality. Republicans just tend to vote with higher frequency but I'd still bet at least half of that effect, the whole 'pray for rain' aspect of it, is just a matter of age, old Dems drag themselves to the polls every time too, maybe more of them would leave the circle empty but I don't really know. I do know that I'm hip deep with the local GOP and I can't really remember a single conversation this year that resulted in a more negative response on Romney then 'Yeah, he's okay but I'd prefer someone else', and with this group, every last one will have a sign for him in their yard this fall, even if it says Santorum now.



Polls of Americans vs Registered Voters vs Likely Voters, yeah that's always a big one. I don't think there's room for a landslide or even a solid win for Obama, and I don't think he can rely on a wave of new voters energized in the numbers or enthusiasm of '08 and he can't rely on Mitt sticking his foot in his mouth because the only foot-in-mouth Mitt ever does is things that reinforce his image as a Ken Doll or as uber-wealthy, and those are already stuck and have been for years, they can't really get worse and he never had a chance to remove the image and frankly being a walking political stereotype can only hurt you so much, you just can't move numbers heavy against someone for appearing to be what half the population thinks all politicians are anyway.