The new Pew Poll is getting a lot of attention, because it shows that the independent voters likely to show up on Election Day prefer Republicans by a large margin, 49 percent to 36 percent. And likely voters on the whole prefer the Republicans by 50 to 43.

It's a different story with registered voters: Independents still favor the Republicans, but only by a small margin (3 points). And voters overall actually prefer the Democrats, 47 percent to 43.

I'm not Nate Silver, so maybe I'm missing something obvious here. But the results would appear to confirm what we've been seeing for weeks: Voters who lean Republican are a lot more enthusiastic than those who lean Democratic. And that will make for a very, very rough election.

Update: Ed Kilgore e-mails with the following observation: