Well, depending on which pollster you are buying stock in (and it is a genuine debate, since neither of them are Rasmussen), Democrats should either be deeply concerned about flagging voter intensity, or heartened by surprisingly high voter intensity among African Americans.
So say a pair of new surveys released this week on the 2010 elections, one by Gallup, and the other by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The data from Gallup is part of what the pollster promises will be a weekly look at the 2010 elections. On the generic ballot test, the Democrats enjoy a slight advantage (47-44).
On the issue of voter intensity, though, the Democrats languish far behind their Republican counterparts:
Gallup Poll, March 1-7, 2010, Voters by Party Expressing That They Are "Very Enthusiastic" About Voting in November Elections
Republicans 42
Democrats 24
An eighteen-point enthusiasm gap would be cause for concern, to be sure, if not outright alarm. It also tracks reasonably close to a slightly different variation of our own DK Tracking Poll, where 49% of Republicans say that are "definitely voting" or "voting", compared to just 39% of Democrats.
Meanwhile, the new poll from the Joint Center on Political and Economic Studies goes the other direction. That poll, conducted in four potentially competitive Senate states (Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, and South Carolina), shows that between 74-80% of African American voters in those states consider themselves "very likely" to vote.
If true, that would be a huge boon for Democrats, since African-American voters are incredibly reliable Democratic voters. Indeed, in the 2006 midterm elections, African Americans went 89-10 in favor of Democratic candidates.
It is worth pointing out, however, that this survey is not corroborated by our tracking poll. Indeed last week's tracking poll identified that 34% of African American voters are already identifying themselves as either "not likely to vote" or "not voting".
Granted, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. The Joint Center poll is of just four potential battleground states, while the DK/R2K poll is a national poll.
Unfortunately for the Dems, most other national polling seems to lean more in the Gallup direction than that of the Joint Center of Political and Economic Studies.
This explains why finding a way to excite the base enough to head to the polls remains something that should be a high priority for Democrats eager to protect their majorities in the House and Senate.