(CNN) The headline out of CNN's new national poll released on Thursday morning was not good for President Donald Trump: He trails de facto Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 11 points in a hypothetical general election matchup.
Much of the poll was equally dire for Trump -- Biden leads among women by 30 points, for example -- but there is one data point that the President and his supporters can rightly note as good news.
It's this: 8 in 10 Republican voters are either "extremely" or "very" enthusiastic about voting in the fall election as compared to just more than half of Democratic voters (56%) who describe themselves as equally excited about casting a ballot in November.
That's a significant enthusiasm gap -- and it shows up in other subgroups that favor Trump in the poll too. Whites (63%) are far more likely than non-whites (41%) to say they are "extremely" or "very" enthusiastic about voting this fall. Ditto self-identified conservatives (69%) vs self-identified liberals (56%).
What all those numbers make clear is that, at the moment, voters likely to cast a ballot for Trump are more excited about doing so than those who will likely vote against Trump.
Now, some of that passion gap is explained by the fact that Trump is the incumbent President of the United States who faced a minimal primary challenge for the nomination while Biden has just emerged as his party's standard-bearer from a field that once topped 20 people.
Presumably in a month or so, with the idea of Biden as the nominee more settled in Democrats' minds, that number will go up.
But there's no doubt that real concerns remain among some Democrats about Biden's ability to create real passion among some pockets of Democrats -- most notably those loyalists of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who dropped from the race on Wednesday.
"Bernie was too kind to go after Biden, but it's coming," tweeted Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders' former national press secretary, in response to a Tucker Carlson segment on Biden's mental capacity. "Either Dem leadership cares more abt maintaining a corporate status quo than getting rid of Trump, or they're planning to replace Joe - adopting a pretty fast and loose relationship w/ representative Democracy. Lose lose."
Biden has to hope he can heal that divide sooner rather than later -- perhaps using the prospect of a second Trump term as a way to get more Democrats enthused about his candidacy.
The Point: Trump is an underdog, as of today, in the general election against Biden. But if there is a path to victory for the incumbent it lies in dividing Democrats and keeping enthusiasm for Biden among their ranks low.