A Thought On The Enthusiasm Gap

We're told that the enthusiasm gap this year is historically large, in either direction, right? Well, this might be grasping at straws, we'll know after election day, but it strikes me that if this is an historically large enthusiasm gap, something qualitatively different might be going on. It might not be just a stronger version of the same phenomenon as 2006-08 for Democrats, 1994 for Republicans, or whatever. And if it is something different, then maybe it won't have a result that matches linearly what you would expect from the ordinary effects of enthusiasm. I don't know exactly what the mechanism for that would be; I think Democratic enthusiasm is pretty high and Republican enthusiasm is just off the charts, so maybe there's some element of diminishing returns there, or whatever. But the point is, the very fact that this measurement is *so* unusual might be an indicator that the usual rules aren't applying. We'll see, in the wee hours of November 4th.