It's still early days for the 2012 presidential election, and while the news media are avidly following the travel schedules, debate performances and general comings and goings of various candidates and potential candidates alike, most voters themselves have yet to focus on the election or the potential field. What's more, that's typical for this point in time in a presidential election cycle.

 

Just one in four voters are paying a lot of attention to the campaign now - about the same as in June 2007. Attention was even lower during the summers of 2003 and 1999; then, just over one in ten were paying a lot of attention. In December 1995, the earliest point in the 1996 election cycle in which the question was asked in CBS News Polls, 17 percent were paying a lot of attention.