Nearly eight in 10 Democrats say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting –
Vice Presidential Pick Tim Walz and Kamala Harris together on the stage: NAJ screen shot
Staff Report –
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Measuring voter enthusiasm is one way to gauge trends in the run up to an election, and on that front thanks to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, enthusiasm among Democrats to vote in November is surging.
Americans’ enthusiasm about voting in this year’s election has surged in recent months, according to the latest Gallup poll, with 69 percent of adults voters in the U.S. now saying they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting. That’s up from 54 percent in March.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are driving the surge in enthusiasm. In March, only 55 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting, with many not enthusiastic about a rematch between President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump.
After President Biden abandoned his reelection bid on July 2, and party leaders quickly coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, now 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting.
That’s a good sign for the Harris-Walz campaign with only a little more than two months to go before the election.
Gallup is now reporting that this is the highest enthusiasm level ever measured during a presidential election campaign, up from the 67 percent finding in September 2020 just before Biden bested Trump, and October 2008, right before President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden bested John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin.
Republicans and Republican leaners held a slight edge in enthusiasm in March, but now trail Democrats by a “significant margin,” Gallup says, with their current 64 percent enthusiasm score up only slightly from 59 percent in the spring.
Thinking About the Election
Another measure of trends in public opinion can be found in asking voters whether they are spending time thinking about the election. Gallup found that 79 percent of Americans are saying they have given “quite a lot” of thought to the election, surpassing the previous August high of 74 percent in 2008.
“Given that more Americans typically pay attention to the election closer to Election Day than do in August, 2024 is poised to establish a new high in election thought at the conclusion of the campaign,” Gallup says.
Early this year, Republicans were more likely than Democrats and independents to be thinking about the election, perhaps because of the Republican presidential primaries. Now, Democrats and Republicans show similar levels of attention, with independents still trailing by about 20 percentage points.
Most Voters Have Made Up Their Minds
With voters highly engaged in the election campaign, it is not surprising that most have already made their choice about whom they will be voting for, Gallup says. Seventy-nine percent of adults in the U.S., including 83 percent of those registered to vote, report they have made up their mind, leaving about one in five saying they are still deciding. That’s 19 percent of all adults, and 16 percent of registered voters.
Democrats (93%) are slightly more likely than Republican adults (86%) to say they have made up their mind. About six in 10 political independents report having decided on a candidate, while 35 percent have not, showing there is still time to move some voters before the election.
Americans Positive About the Campaign Process
Americans mostly answer positively when asked about six different ways the campaign could reflect a healthy democracy.
Specifically, 79 percent think the presidential campaign has identified at least one good candidate, while 71 percent say it has fostered discussion of important issues, 81 percent believe they know where the candidates stand on those issues, and 72 percent say the candidates have offered solutions to the country’s problems. Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats agree that the campaign is going well in these respects.
On a more personal level, 88 percent of adults in the U.S. say it makes a real difference to them who is elected president.
The Aug. 1-20 survey was conducted mostly before the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention, which means actual enthusiasm on the part of Democrats may be underestimated here.
See Our Coverage of the Convention
Kamala Harris’s Presidential Address Knocks Trump Out of the Park
Tim Walz Accepts the Democratic Party’s Nomination for Vice President: Oprah Winfrey Wows the Crowd
Michelle Obama Steals the Show on Night Two of the Democratic National Convention
About the Author
Glynn Wilson is an expert on public opinion as an academic researcher and a journalist. He minored in Political Science with a major in Journalism and Communications at the University of Alabama in an undergraduate BA program back in the early 1980s, where he took every class offered related to this specialty. He also spent some time working with the Capstone Poll in those days, run by Political Science Professor Pat Cotter, and journalism professor Jim Stovall. He covered public opinion for newspapers and the UPI wire service after that for 10 years as part of the beat of covering public affairs and politics, including elections. He then went back to grad school at UA in the mid-1990s. One of his graduate research jobs was to oversee the public opinion lab in the College of Communications, also under the leadership of Stovall and Cotter, who conducted most of the political election polls in Alabama for a couple of decades. Wilson’s academic research specialty was in the area of media effects on public opinion. He later worked toward a Ph.D. in this research, but rather than continue teaching and jump through the final hoop of defending a dissertation at the University of Tennessee, he opted to go back into the news business working for The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times and other publications. He went independent on the web in 2005 in the early blogging era when newspapers were experiencing financial troubles, and has covered public opinion ever since as one of his many specialty beats.
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