Tea Party fuels Republican edge in enthusiasm

As Election Day gets closer, the "enthusiasm gap" is getting clearer. A new poll from the Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University finds a huge disparity when it comes to which voters are motivated to vote in upcoming midterm elections. According to the poll, 74 percent of self-described Tea Party supporters are "very enthusiastic" about voting in the elections. Contrast that with just 43 percent of Democrats and 57 of Republicans who say the same. Late last week, a separate CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found only a third of Democrats are enthusiastic about voting. That's good news for Republicans. Time and again, the Tea Party movement has pushed the most conservative candidates to victory in Republican primaries. Not only are Democrats not as enthusiastic as Republicans, they're also not quite as unified. In races all over the country, conservative Democrats are distancing themselves from their own party leaders including the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...more