Obama’s Challenge is Turnout

Gallup reports a dead even race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – 46 percent to 46 percent.  The candidates are closely matched, with nearly symmetrical support among the primary demographic groupings:  gender, partisanship, religiosity, ethnicity and age.

Obama has the support of 50 percent of women voters and 42 percent of men, the precise reciprocal of Romney’s support.  Obama only loses 6 percent of Democrats to Romney and Romney holds all but seven percent of Republicans against Obama.

Obama’s challenge is that two of his core constituencies – Hispanics and voters under 29 years old – indicate a low likelihood to vote.

Charlie Cook uses in his analyses a Gallup question that asked voters to rate their likelihood to vote on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest certainty.  Younger voters and Hispanics are more than 10 points below Black voters or non-Hispanic Whites in likelihood to vote.

Hence, Obama’s attention to Hispanics and young voters is more about turnout than persuasion.  And, all that field work is his reinforcements.

See:
National Journal:  Trouble for Obama
Gallup:  Structure of U.S. presidential race shows little change so far