A sign of the times? O’Biden crowd thin at last pre-election rally

The Hill’s Ballot Box blog reports a not so huge crowd for our celebrity President and Vice President Biden in their final rally for Democrats prior to the election (via):

CLEVELAND — The arena where President Obama and Vice President Biden are making their final appeal to Democrats to get out and vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections was far from capacity Sunday afternoon.

The crowd estimate stands at 8,000 in the arena that seats just over 13,000 and a couple thousand empty seats are visible above the stage where Obama and Biden rallied supporters.

The event is the final one in a series of “Moving America Forward” rallies aimed at ginning up enthusiasm with the party’s largely deflated base ahead of Tuesday.

The NYT’s Caucus blog steps in to helpfully point out that the rally had some competition … and that a few weeks ago Obama was drawing much bigger crowds:

Organizers noted the president was competing on a Sunday afternoon with church, football and Halloween. And Mr. Obama drew a huge crowd of about 35,000 when he was in nearby Columbus, Ohio, in an earlier October rally. Still, the thin crowd was perhaps a foreboding sign in the waning days of the midterm races, when Mr. Obama, who was joined Sunday by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., considers getting Democrats to the polls his most important mission.

As I’ve noted before, with the enthusiasm gap so drastically different between Republicans and Democrats this year, there is little else the President can do at this point outside of trying to keep the losses respectable.

But at this point, that may not even be possible. From the Gallup polling service:

PRINCETON, NJ — The final USA Today/Gallup measure of Americans’ voting intentions for Congress shows Republicans continuing to hold a substantial lead over Democrats among likely voters, a lead large enough to suggest that regardless of turnout, the Republicans will win more than the 40 seats needed to give them the majority in the U.S. House.

The results are from Gallup’s Oct. 28-31 survey of 1,539 likely voters. It finds 52% to 55% of likely voters preferring the Republican candidate and 40% to 42% for the Democratic candidate on the national generic ballot — depending on turnout assumptions. Gallup’s analysis of several indicators of voter turnout from the weekend poll suggests turnout will be slightly higher than in recent years, at 45%. This would give the Republicans a 55% to 40% lead on the generic ballot, with 5% undecided.

[…]

Gallup models the number of seats a party will control based on that party’s share of the national two-party vote for the House of Representatives, using historical voting data in midterm elections from 1946 to 2006. The model takes into account the majority party in Congress entering the elections.

Gallup’s historical model suggests that a party needs at least a two-point advantage in the national House vote to win a majority of the 435 seats. The Republicans’ current likely voter margin suggests that this scenario is highly probable, making the question of interest this election not whether the GOP will win the majority, but by how much. Taking Gallup’s final survey’s margin of error into account, the historical model predicts that the Republicans could gain anywhere from 60 seats on up, with gains well beyond that possible.

It should be noted, however, that this year’s 15-point gap in favor of the Republican candidates among likely voters is unprecedented in Gallup polling and could result in the largest Republican margin in House voting in several generations. This means that seat projections have moved into uncharted territory, in which past relationships between the national two-party vote and the number of seats won may not be maintained.

Got butterflies in your tummy this morning? I do.