This morning I took a look at all of the House Polling since since September 12th that is listed at electoral-vote.com. There have been 31 polls taken since the 12th.
In 2008 the Democrats beat the GOP by 10.68%.In the 31 polls I looked at, the average shift in the margin was -10.88. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?
It is, but what it also suggests is that the generic ballot isn’t anywhere close to GOP +10. What really caught my eye was comparing the numbers against the Cook PVI. On average, the 31 races are about 6 points better for the Democrats than where you would expect them to be in a 50-50 race. This is the power of incumbency, and suggests that when you look at individual races Democrats are running ahead of where they should be given the generic ballot.
This is a very rough analysis, obviously. But in the past I have found comparing swings in local races against the National Swings very useful.
Here is the data:
https://spreadsheets.google.co…
Looks about right to me.
One thing I think would be interesting would be to see how big the difference in polls are among Democrats who were in close races in 08 and have voted against a lot of Obama’s agenda. I’m thinking along the lines of Walt Minnick, Bobby Bright, Frank Kratovil etc. are actually polling above how they did in 08.
Is it possible that Rs are up 5-10 points in the generic ballot poll, but most of those gains were made in non-swing seats (so for example Democratic seats where the incumbent now gets 60% as opposed to 75% or where the Republican now gets 75% as opposed to 55%). I hope so because this would mean we actually lose a lot fewer seats than what those are expecting.
http://i922.photobucket.com/al…
and I think it’s the best evidence for what the generic ballot split really is this election.
I don’t think there are any substantial number of voters out there who have really changed their minds about whether they’ll turn out on Nov. 2 and who they’re leaning for. So I believe the electorate for Nov. 2 has been set since roughly April or May. I don’t see any turnout factors that have changed substantively since then.
That leaves the question of how they’ll split. Which I don’t think has genuinely changed here. Gallup shows that the at the points of maximum motivation (or minimal Undecideds) the Republican peak is about 51%, the Democratic peak about 49%. A few of those- maybe 1-2% in aggregate – will probably vote for third party candidates or NOTA in Nevada or write-ins.
The big Democratic wins in ’06 and ’08 had popular House vote splits of iirc 53%-45%, for comparison. And with so much of the Republican vote agreggated in the South, I’m not seeing Republicans win majorities in either chamber yet.