The Washington Post carries a column, "The Fix" by Chris Cillezza. He covers electoral politics for a town where that is the local industry. A recent column: "Parsing the Polls: Too Early to See the Wave?" deals with the 'generic ballot': "If you were to vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress, for which would you vote?" He lists five recent polls, which average out at 13.4% advantage for Democrats. (Oddly, the Democratic one gave Democrats the least advantage.) He lists several reasons why this doesn't necessarily suggest a sweep in November.
Reasons, and an URL, after the jump.
The column can be found at Cillizza
He lists the usual bit about most districts being gerrymandered for incumbents; only 34% of incumbents won with less than 55%. That's true, but the record doesn't show how seriously the seaat was contested in '04.
Another point he makes is that there is no record of how the generic ballot this early predicts tidal waves of change. On the corresponding dates in 1994, Democrats were ahead. The entire Republican revolution in the House developed in less than seven months.
My take on that is that we are somewhat ahead, but we still have time to push way ahead. The people on this blog should be working on increasing the generic disgust with the Republicans in Congress.