Michael Barone thinks it might be:
…there is some evidence that the balance of enthusiasm has shifted and that young people — who seemed to turn out and vote for Obama in unusually high numbers in the primaries and caucuses — are no long so enthusiastic about him.
The first bit of evidence comes from the July 10-13 ABC/Washington Post poll. It asked registered voters if they were “certain” to vote. Only 46 percent of voters under 30 said they were — substantially lower than the 66 percent who said so in the ABC/Washington Post poll taken Feb. 28-March 2, at a time when Obama was enjoying a string of primary and caucus victories and before the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were circulated on youtube.com on March 13. The 46 percent of young voters saying in July they were certain to vote was far lower than the 79 percent of 65 and over voters who said they were.
The second bit of evidence comes from the Gallup/USAToday poll taken July 25-27. This poll showed that when you narrowed the base of respondents down from registered voters to likely voters, John McCain was ahead 49 percent to 45 percent. That’s a vivid contrast from the contemporaneous Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, and it was the first national poll since May showing McCain ahead.
The declining enthusiasm of younger voters could also be related to the length of the campaign – younger people being notoriously more impatient than older people, and this campaign has dragged on for quite a long time. Meanwhile, when Obama started acting like President-elect right after wrapping up the nomination he also started acting like the campaign was a sprint rather than the most grueling of marathons. A good reason to have been wary of McCain was on the count of whether or not he – at his age – could stand up to the pounding of an exhausting Presidential campaign. Well, he has – while Obama has shown a marked lack of long-term campaign stamina. He’s got youthful energy, but his lack of experience is showing in his assumption that he’s got it in the bag.
As Barone goes on to note, gauging enthusiasm and turn out is always very difficult – you really don’t know who is going to show up until they show up. With that said, I figure there is a shift going on – of course, a shift which can swing back to Obama – in the sense that Obama is wearing out his welcome…his arrogance, self-centeredness and sheer presumptuousness starts to rub people the wrong way. We’ll see in November the final outcome of this, but my prediction still holds – Obama with a shriking advantage, and the race will go down to the wire.
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