DEMS MAINTAIN ADVANTAGE IN GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL POLL
The Democrats currently enjoy an eight point advantage in the generic congressional ballot, 8.1 in 538 and 7.7 in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls. While both of these aggregators incorporate a number of polls in their measures, they differ slightly in the included polls and how they weight them. This may cause them to differ slightly at any point in time. You can see from the two charts (below) that their trend lines mirror each other. When one looks at the raw polls that are fed into these poll aggregators, the Democrats haven’t trailed in a single poll this year and their lead has ranged from 4-10 points.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-generic-ballot-polls/?ex_cid=rrpromo
https://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2018_generic_congressional_vote-6185.html
Generic congressional ballot polls are important because there will be few high quality polls of individual Congressional districts (e.g., unaffiliated by party with a good predictive track record) through election day. So, political horse race follows will have to rely on these polls for state of the race analyses. They are also important because, as Harry Enten and colleagues at 538 have shown, the generic congressional ballot tracks final voting results well.
DESPITE DEMS ADVANTAGE IN POLL, THEY WOULD ONLY TIE REPUBLICANS IN HOUSE DISTRICTS IF THEY MAINTAINED THIS LEAD THROUGH ELECTION DAY
As we know, the GOP at the state level has been successful in rigging both Federal and State Legislative elections to their advantage through gerrymandering, voter suppression and incumbency. While their advantage through gerrymandering and voter suppression is well understood, both of these work together to provide an additional boost via incumbency. Incumbency confers advantages through media attention and political contributions that make it hard for Democrats to break through because of candidate recruitment and getting their candidates heard.
CURRENT HOUSE BREAKDOWN BY PARTY (OPEN DISTRICTS ARE ALLOCATED BY PARTY OF RETIRING INCUMBENT) https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown
Republican Districts 240
Democratic Districts 195
Republican Advantage 45
Democrats need to flip a net 23 districts for control (218)
These structural advantages have led both Nate Cohen www.nytimes.com/… and Harry Enten (528) fivethirtyeight.com/… to quantify the the GOP advantage at eight percent in the generic congressional ballot. So, the Dems current eight percent lead is only enough to bring them even with the GOP in the House. In other words, a victory of eight percent in the November House elections would only bring the Dems to around 217/218 seats in the House.
GOOD NEWS: DEMS ARE ON THEIR WAY TO A WAVE ELECTION. BAD NEWS: DEMS ARE GOING TO NEED A TSUNAMI TO TAKE THE HOUSE
If the voter turnout rate in 2018 is like the turnout in the three prior mid-term Federal elections (US Elections Project, www.electionproject.org/home ), then we would expect a little over 39 percent of the Voting Eligible Population to actually cast ballots. Based on a simple projection of average growth for the Voting eligible population, we would expect that 235 million people would be eligible to vote in November 2018. Multiplying these two numbers gives us a projected 92.3 million votes cast in November.
If the current state of generic congressional ballot aggregators is applied to the total percentage vote in November, we would expect the Democrats to end up with 54% of the national vote and the Republicans 46%. Put in raw vote totals, the Dems would be expected to receive 49.9 million votes to 42.5 million for the Republicans. The Democrats are looking at a landslide victory of 7.4 million votes over the Republicans. Even under this scenario, given the Republicans structural advantage in voting, the Dems would only be expected to end up with around the same number of Representatives as the Republicans. It would be unclear which party would control the House.
Given these Republican advantages, more than a Blue wave, it will take a tsunami for the Democrats to win the house. The following tables illustrate what a 10 point and 12 point Dem win would look like. Under a ten point Democratic generic congressional ballot victory, the Dems would receive a 9.2 million vote majority, but squeak out with a 9 seat majority (2 percent) in the House. Under a twelve point Democratic generic congressional ballot victory, the Dems would receive a whopping 11.1 million more votes than Republican congressional candidates, but their House majority would be a modest 17 seats, or around 4 percent of the House.
TURNOUT TURNOUT TURNOUT
Clearly, the Dems are going to need a victory of historic proportions. It needs to be something better than where we currently stand (Dems +8) and a margin far larger than any of the four previous mid-terms (2014-R 5.7; 2010-R 6.8; 2006-D 7.9; 2002-R 4.6) www.realclearpolitics.com .
Ironically, in a post about the nature of generic congressional ballot, the only prudent strategy is to ignore this type of polls and work as hard as we can for every last vote. Find blue candidates in your area and go door-to-door for them. Here is a good place to start: dccc.org
Your next motivated voter could be the one who flips the House is this very tight election. .Turnout. Turnout. Turnout.