About that enthusiasm gap

Asked how the Kavanaugh debate would affect their midterm vote, slightly more say it makes them more inclined to support Democrats for Congress than Republicans. Women say the episode draws them toward Democrats over Republicans by a 16-point margin, while men are more evenly split.

While many of the results in the poll fall along familiar partisan lines, it also found that political independents are more suspicious than supportive of the new justice. According to the survey, 55 percent of independents say there should be further investigation of Kavanaugh, while 40 percent are opposed.


The stakes were high, and the party-line fight over Kavanaugh was brutal. It was marked by allegations of excessive drinking in high school and college and of a teenage sexual assault and other misconduct. Democrats at his confirmation hearing further accused Kavanaugh of dishonesty over his answers to questions regarding his work in the George W. Bush White House.

Republican senators said the allegations of sexual misconduct were uncorroborated and vicious, the result of desperate attempts from Democrats and liberal groups to keep Kavanaugh — for 12 years a respected conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — off the high court.

At a White House ceremony Monday night, Trump apologized to the new justice for “the terrible pain and suffering” he and his family were “forced to endure.” He said Kavanaugh had been found “innocent” of the charges against him, even though the senators came to no such determination.

The poll suggests disagreement with Trump’s view that Kavanaugh had been exonerated and does not support the notion of a national backlash against the attacks on Kavanaugh, as some Republicans have suggested.

Rather, the results show the political consequences may be more mixed.

Slightly more registered voters say the Kavanaugh confirmation proceedings make them more likely to support Democrats for Congress than Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, though a 39 percent plurality say it doesn’t make a difference.

There is a gender gap: by 40 percent to 24 percent, women say the debate makes them more likely to back Democratic than Republican candidates. Men are more evenly split, with 30 percent more likely to back Republicans, while 25 percent are more likely to back Democrats.

Among independents, women by a 37 percent to 12 percent margin say the confirmation process has made them more likely to support Democrats than Republicans. Independent men are near evenly split, 22 percent saying it made them more apt to support Democrats vs. 24 percent for Republicans.

Partisans appear more dug-in after the Kavanaugh debate, with 65 percent of Republicans saying it motivates them more to support the GOP and 66 percent of Democrats saying they are more motivated to back their own party. There are no significant gender differences among Democrats and Republicans on the issue.

Looking back at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, half of Americans do not think the Senate did enough to investigate allegations that Kavanaugh committed sexual misconduct in high school and college, 41 percent say it did do enough. Significantly more women think the committee’s actions were deficient, 56 percent vs. 43 percent.

Democrats, who wander in perpetual search of something to panic about, found it Wednesday. According to the NPR-Marist poll, Republicans had cut into the Democrats' generic ballot lead since the summer. The pollsters highlighted one possible reason: a mere two-point edge in Democratic enthusiasm. “Democratic enthusiasm edge evaporates,” read the headline that inspired countless liberals to spill coffee on the dashboards of their hybrids.

Republican pollsters, even those who don't go on TV to wave pompoms, say the trend is real. July and August were terrible months for the party. The last week, since the Kavanaugh hearing, has been pretty good in tracking. In particular, male independents, who have wavered between the parties all year, have been a bit more supportive of Republicans this week.

The “enthusiasm” discussion, however, is about the base, not independents. The going theory is that Democrats woke up a sleeping Republican electorate and that the new number to watch, because Democratic enthusiasm has maxed out, is the Republican enthusiasm.

That might be right, but it's been wrong before. Several Republicans made this point: At this moment six years ago, President Barack Obama held a small lead in polling but Republicans seemed to be building a lead among the most enthusiastic voters. In the first week of October 2012, NBC News polls had 79 percent of Republicans “excited” to vote in the election, compared with just 73 percent of Democrats.

“Republican enthusiasm, up, senior enthusiasm, up,” NBC's Chuck Todd said. “It’s a huge problem [for Obama].”

In 2010 and 2014, the enthusiasm gap was a fairly solid predictor of how each party would be able to turn out their votes. In 2012, it wasn't. We honestly don't know which year this will resemble or how badly it will shatter the mold.

But the commentary about how the Kavanaugh hearings have affected Republicans carries some echoes of the commentary before the 2012 election. There's little talk of how Kavanaugh has inspired nonvoters or independents; it's mostly about how he has energized and united Republicans. That sounds a lot like what we heard six years ago, when Mitt Romney's dominant first debate with Obama quieted a lot of conservative grumbling about his campaign. At the time, it obscured how Romney trailed Obama in overall favorability, and right now, the talk about Kavanaugh obscures how Republicans are still heading into an election with a president whose favorable numbers resemble Obama's before his midterm routs.