Will 2012 be more like 2008 or 2004?

Sean Trende over at Real Clear Politics is a numbers guru after my own heart. And he had a little fun with the most recent PPP numbers asking voters' preference for President in 2012:

Re-electing the first black president isn’t as exciting as electing him for the first time, and younger voters who flocked to vote for him in 2008 might be less thrilled in 2012. If you put in the 2004 exit poll numbers – somewhere between the 2008 and likely 2010 numbers, the head-to-heads are quite a bit worse for Obama. He trails Huckabee 49-42, Romney 45-44, and trails Palin 47-44 and trails Gingrich by a narrow 45.3-44.8 margin.

As my loyal readers should know by now, I'd prefer a couple candidates moreso than those mentioned above. But either way, it's an interesting breakdown.

It's impossible to predict the political environment two years from now, but with that said, I think it's fair to say the enthusiasm among the left won't be at the same level we saw in 2008. 2004 also had a large share of anti-Bush voters that helped drive up Democratic turnout. So where will we be in 2012? Who knows, but it's clear that things won't be quite as easy two years from now as they were two years ago.