More than half of all Democrats are are either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for president this year, according to a *USA Today*/Gallup poll released today. The level of general enthusiasm, 58 percent, is slightly higher than what Gallup found last April (53 percent), but not as high as in the last two months before the 2004 election. Interest levels in an election tend to increase over the course of a campaign cycle.

A companion question drew 60 percent of all respondents to say they are “more enthusiastic about voting than usual,” while 29 percent report being less enthusiastic. Gallup also asked this question in January of the last two presidential election years, and the current figure is higher than the results from both 2000 and 2004.

For both measures of enthusiasm, Democrats are responding positively at higher rates than Republicans. There is a 12 percentage point difference in the “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic category, with Democrats responding at 64 percent and Republicans at 52 percent. There is a considerably higher 25 percentage point partisan gap on the comparative enthusiasm question, the largest party difference Gallup has ever measured in a presidential election year. While Democrats seem to be more excited about the presidential election this time around, the Republican figures are basically equivalent to what Gallup measured in January 2004 (53 percent) and January 2000 (51 percent).

Results based on a national sample of 2,010 adults have a margin of error of ‘2 percent. The margin of error for results of just the Democrats or the Republicans is ‘5 percent, due to the smaller sample size.