Turnout

With only one week left in the 2012 campaign, a major new Pew Research Center poll is projecting a relatively high level of voter turnout in the dead-even presidential contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The national opinion survey, released Monday, shows the president and the former Massachusetts governor each drawing support from 47% of likely voters. In an encouraging sign for the Republican challenger, the poll found that Romney-leaning voters are more likely to turn out to vote than those leaning to Obama.

The sleek logo for LACMA's “art+film” gala does a beautiful job of balancing “art” and “film,” giving each word equal space around the plus sign. The museum gala that took place Saturday night under that rubric was another story: The entertainment world easily outshone the art world, and the evening designed to celebrate artist Ed Ruscha alongside filmmaker Stanley Kubrick became mainly a Kubrick odyssey, to borrow the title of the screening series that accompanies LACMA's new Kubrick exhibition.

CLEVELAND - President Obama's reelection campaign is invoking Al Gore's narrow loss to George W. Bush in the Florida recount of 2000 to spur voters in battleground states to the polls in a close White House race that either side could lose if even a small band of supporters fails to cast ballots. In an ad that began airing in Ohio on Wednesday, Obama's campaign reminds television viewers of the 32-day drama that unfolded when the 2000 election in Florida finished in a near-tie. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling stopped the recount, effectively naming Bush the winner of Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.

Will the youth vote, which was so integral to President Obama's victory in 2008, repeat its performance at the polls? A new survey from Harvard University indicates that, while still largely in support of the president, the so-called “millennial” generation is significantly less likely to express that sentiment in November. Among likely 18-to-29-year-old voters, 55% say they will vote for Obama, 36% say they will vote for Mitt Romney and 9% are undecided, and Obama leads 48% to 26% among the entire demographic.

Cal State L.A. senior Jason Jimenez didn't hesitate when asked recently why he was registering to vote for the first time. "Prop. 30," he said. Jimenez was referring to the November ballot measure that would temporarily raise state sales taxes and the income taxes of high earners. It's being touted as the only way to avoid tuition increases this year at California's public universities, and if it passes, Cal State students could get a tuition rebate. "I've got to vote for that.

As President Obama and Mitt Romney prepare to face off in Denver on Wednesday in their first debate, both are focused keenly on the power of Latino voters to determine the election's outcome in Colorado, Nevada and Florida, among other states. Dual gestures this week by the presidential rivals demonstrated two things: The president cannot do enough to ensure that Latinos show up to vote, and Romney is struggling to narrow the Democratic incumbent's lopsided advantage among them. Within the span of a few hours Monday, Obama announced that he would visit the California home of civil rights icon Cesar Chavez at a ceremony next week designating it as a national monument, and Romney announced that he would honor Obama's order blocking the deportation of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.

Nearly 24 million Latinos are eligible to vote, bolstering claims about the group's potential impact in the 2012 presidential election. But if history is any teacher, their turnout in November could lag far behind other groups, including whites and blacks. That's the conclusion in a report by the Pew Hispanic Center , which crunched Census Bureau data. The increase in eligible Latino voters since 2008 is dramatic. In that year's presidential election, 19.5 million Latinos were eligible to vote, or 22% fewer than can vote this year.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - President Obama's campaign team said Tuesday that its on-the-ground efforts to turn out voters are much greater than rival Mitt Romney's - and will make their own renowned ground game of four years ago seem prehistoric - a tactical advantage that could add a point or two at the ballot box in key swing states on election day. "We're going to make 2008 on the ground look like 'Jurassic Park,' " said campaign manager Jim Messina, at...

Chick-fil-A appears to have set a company record in sales on Wednesday, a day on which Americans were encouraged to show their support for the fast-food restaurant whose leadership has drawn both criticism and praise in recent weeks for its opposition to same-sex marriage. The privately held company declined to give specific sales figures but released a statement to the Los Angeles Times confirming that frenzied sales of chicken sandwiches and cross-cut waffle fries had made for a record-setting day. "We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country," said Steve Robinson, executive vice president of marketing, in the statement.

Less than a third of California's voters participated in the June primary election, the secretary of state's office said Friday, and the majority did so by mail. Turnout for the June 5 election was 5,328,296, or 31%, and 65% used mail-in ballots instead of voting at the polls on election day. Among the counties, turnout was lowest in Los Angeles County, where just 21.8% of voters cast ballots. It was highest in rural Sierra (59.2%), Alpine (58.6%) and Amador (57.1%) counties.