It seems that last month‘s announcement of President Obama’s absolutely not political “policy shift” on his Homeland Security Department’s “discretionary enforcement” had an impact that sent some ripples through the Hispanic community. According to a new WSJ/NBC/Telemundo poll, Mr. Obama has since widened his lead over Mitt Romney in terms of Hispanic support:

A new national poll of Hispanic registered voters, conducted by The Wall Street Journal, NBC News and the Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, finds Mr. Obama leading his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, 67%-23%, a gap four percentage points wider than in last month’s poll. …

But the poll also laid bare the challenges Mr. Obama and his campaign face in translating the support into actual votes.

Compared to 2008, enthusiasm about the November election is now much lower among Hispanics than among any other major voting bloc.

Just 55% of Hispanic voters told the pollsters they had high-intensity interest in the upcoming elections, down from 64% in July 2008. At the same time, the number of Hispanic voters who said they were more enthusiastic about this election than the last one dropped by seven percentage points in just a month.

Unfortunately for President Obama, it looks like members of the Hispanic voting bloc may not be the only ones they’ll have difficulty getting fired up enough to show up en masse on election day and cast their ballot. While the conservative base is feeling pretty darn fed up with President Obama’s many failures, Democrats don’t seem able to muster up an equivalent level of enthusiasm about them, according to Gallup:

Democrats are significantly less likely now (39%) than they were in the summers of 2004 and 2008 to say they are “more enthusiastic about voting than usual” in the coming presidential election. Republicans are more enthusiastic now than in 2008, and the same as in 2004.

While concern with polls of likely and registered voters and even popular votes of course runs high, ensuring that likely voters will be actual voters is obviously elementary. Voter enthusiasm does tend to surge as elections get closer, but if this trend continues, I’d chalk it up to pretty good news for Mitt Romney. Barack Obama’s got a record, and the energized fanaticism of Hopenchange is no more.