Of course, Democrats and Republicans are becoming increasingly polarized in their views of Romney. From Gallup:
This trend will likely continue.
Most interesting is the recent partisan polarization in views of the economy. Again, from Gallup:
In September 2011, Democrats and Republicans were 24 points apart on the economic confidence index. Now they are 53 points apart. Put differently, a lot of the increase in economic confidence is coming from the president’s party.
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the second chart points to an interesting question: if, as much research shows, it is really perceptions of the economy that determine individual-level decision about vote choice, how come that partisan differences seem to account for so much of the differences in perceptions of the economy? in other words: if the idea of economic voting is based economic perceptions driving vote choice, doesn’t the chart suggest that this logic is somewhat circular?
Yes, the relationship between individual-level economic perceptions and vote choice is no doubt complicated by possible endogeneity — whereby vote choice is essentially driving perceptions. See Robert Erikson on this:
http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/erikson_economic_voting.pdf
Well, once the economy is no longer unambiguously bad, there’s more room for partisan motivations.