Is GOP Enthusiasm Dying Down ?

The Republicans took the House of Representatives away from the Democrats in the 2010 election -- and they did it because the Republican voters were highly enthusiastic about voting. They showed up at the polls while many frustrated Democrats and Independents did not. Until recently, there were those who believed the same thing could happen in the 2012 election.

In the last couple of months, there have been some polls showing enthusiasm among Democrats has risen, and now rivals that of the Republicans. That is very good news for Democrats, but there may be something that is even better news than that -- that Republican enthusiasm about the upcoming elections in November may be waning. If that happens, the 2012 election could look a lot more like the 2008 election than the 2010 election (and that would mean a huge victory for Democrats).

This idea started to take shape after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. In both of those contests the turnout was about the same as it had been in 2008. The third state to vote was South Carolina, and the turnout there did increase over the 2008 primary. But that was a state with a huge teabagger/evangelical vote, and they turned out for Newt Gingrich, the anti-Romney candidate.

It is still up in the air whether they will repeat that kind of enthusiastic turnout if Romney wins the nomination (and the Gallup Poll has Romney back in the lead nationally, 31% to 26%). Knowing their deep distaste for Romney, I seriously doubt it. Many of those teabagger/evangelicals would then see the race as being between a Chicago liberal and a Massachusetts liberal.

Then we get to the Florida primary. The chart above was made from the results of that primary. The black dots represent Florida counties. The further to the right side of the chart, the higher the vote total was for Gingrich (and vice versa). Not that the only counties that had a turnout exceeding that of 2008 were the Gingrich counties, which were mostly northern rural counties. The high-population urban counties all voted for Romney and are in the lower left side of the chart. Their turnout was significantly lower than in 2008.

In fact, the total turnout for the Florida primary was significantly lower this year than it was in 2008 -- about 14% lower. Romney may have won in Florida, but he clearly did not inspire any enthusiasm in Florida Republicans. If he goes on to win the nomination, I think we can safely say the Gingrich (and Paul and Santorum) voters will be even less enthused than Romney's voters already are.

And Romney's big-spending negative campaign is not going to help win over those teabagger/evangelicals. They already don't like or trust Romney, and they'll have a hard time forgetting his treatment of their preferred candidates. If Romney gets the nomination, some of them will vote third-party and others will just stay home on election day. The only question is how many, and how badly will Republicans be hurt.