americans, latino, college educated white voters. can they have an issue set that brings them all together, makes them enthusiastic, mobilizes them and gets to the polls? it s a very tall order. it s a tall order. look, we have new numbers. campaigns have numbers just about every day. they have numbers as good if not better than our numbers which is one reason to the enthusiasm question democrats see it coming which is why the former president barack obama is out there trying to convince democrats you might be discouraged, maybe you re mad at the president. vote. but i m here to tell you, nevada, that tuning out is not an option. moping and feeling cynical is not an option. the only way to make this economy fair is if we, all of us, fight for it. the only way to save democracy is we together fight for it. it s a tough argument, though, melanie, in the sense
to here, when you put republicans, democrats, and independents together for that matter, is abortion clocks in in single digits. but when you just look at democratic voters, it s actually the number two issue there in terms of salience. it gets back to the question, i believe it s the screen before this, the enthusiasm question we talked about. this is basically the way this question is asked in the poll, and i ve been doing this for years so you can compare in past midterm cycles. you ask, on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you about voting in this year s midterm elections? what you re seeing here is the percentage in each party who said either a 9 or a 10, put themselves at the top level of the scale in terms of interest. at the start of this year, there was a huge disparity between the parties. republicans had a 17-point advantage there on the high enthusiasm for voting in the midterms. that was basically cut in half in may. of course, the dobbs decision came down in june.
when you are at the gas pump, huge. sorry. if you have a woman who is pumping her gas and looking at the price of gas and rolls in a man and starts thinking i have freaking less rights than this guy that s pumping gas next to me, that is important. you might be rolling your eyes scott, but you re a dude. so i am sorry. but this is a huge issue for women and their families. the democrats coming into this cycle had an enthusiasm problem. it s really important for them to at least match republicans on the enthusiasm question. i think that perhaps this issue plus guns could help them get there. but there is also a lot of people in the messy middle for whom this is important, but they are weighing it along with other things. and i think that s where we don t know how it s gonna play out at the end of the day. we don t know. it will be up to the voters to make this decision and we will seal what they say. i want to switch. we have another story in washington today when it comes to lawmak
2018 in terms of midterm turnout and enthusiasm very high, like 100-year high. how do things look right now? we can look at the primary to give you an idea. there is all this talk, oh, once trump leaves the white house voters will be less engaged. actually, they re more engaged so far in the primaries. this is 2022 primary turnout compared to 2018. overall, look at this, we are up 12%. we are up 12%. among democrats i will point out that we re down, but just 3%. but this is primarily being driven by republican primary turnout. look at this number, up 29%. whenever you see a rise like that you know something is cooking and here is what is cooking is republicans are really engaged and overall that has made the electorate also more engaged. these are actual people showing up at actual polls to vote in actual primaries. yes. harry, you re also seeing it in some of the polling in terms of the enthusiasm question. we are.
and go back. of course, the problem for joe biden this isn t just the money problem. it s an enthusiasm problem. the reason the grass roots support isn t coming to stave off this decision is because there s not that much energy for him. inf that is true, it won t be just ads that will be able to overcome that. it s a much deeper and more structural problem with the campaign. and that is what we re going to test now if the super pac does happen and we see the money start flowing. one quick point about that, too. i think there is enthusiasm question, the same question we had about hillary clinton 2016. bernie had all the enthusiasm but she got all the votes. enthusiasm doesn t necessarily translate to people who will turn out to vote for you. this might feed into the swampy picture. sure. of joe biden, 40 years in politics, hunter biden, all these problematic votes we ll see coming up. if you re elizabeth warren, bernie sanders, that s exactly what you should say. i think bid