MoveOn releases another 25 House polls from PPP, but do they predict Republican doom?

MoveOn has released another 25 polls from PPP of Republican-held House districts, bringing their total to 61 seats surveyed in the past few weeks. The methodology is same they used with prior batches (available here and here), so you can read our prior posts if you'd like a refresher. For now, you can find a full chart summarizing all the results below the fold. ("O%" refers to Barack Obama's share of the vote in each congressional district in 2012. The "Δ" or "delta" refers to the change in net performance from the initial ballot question to the informed ballot question.)

At this point, MoveOn has actually paid for polls in every Republican seat where Barack Obama took at least 45 percent of the vote in 2012, save three: MN-02, MN-03, and NE-02, the latter two of which the DCCC has also polled recently. (They've also tested two redder districts, KY-06 and OH-06.) In most of these newly-polled districts, though, there hasn't even been a hint of a possible serious Democratic challenge, but now, across these 61 polls, Republican incumbents have an average minus 5 approval rating, and they trail their generic Democratic opponents 44-45.

This portends one of two possible scenarios: either Republicans are in for a serious drubbing in 2014, or we'll be treated to a series of articles about how generic polling a year out isn't predictive of very much. Given the GOP's brutal October thanks to the federal government shutdown they forced, it's certainly possible that Democrats will do very well in the midterms. But as Mark Blumenthal recently cautioned, some early PPP polls last cycle that were similar to MoveOn's wound up looking overly rosy for Team Blue.

I think the best sanity check here would be if someone commissioned PPP to poll a couple dozen potentially vulnerable Democratic-held seats. If, say, people like Ann Kirkpatrick in AZ-01 or Sean Maloney in NY-18 are also shown to be losing by similar margins, then maybe generic polls like this are simply an opportunity for voters to express their dissatisfaction with incumbents. But if Dems are in better shape than their GOP counterparts, then perhaps the party is in store for real gains next year. So, who's gonna step up?

					Initial Ballot			Informed Ballot
CD	O%	Incumbent	Approval	Net	(R)	(D)	Net	(R)	(D)	Net	Δ
CA-39	47.1	Ed Royce	36-36	0	43	45	-2	44	48	-4	-2
CA-49	45.7	Darrel Issa	43-49	-6	47	48	-1	47	49	-2	-1
CO-03	45.8	Scott Tipton	28-51	-23	42	48	-6	42	50	-8	-2
FL-07	47.1	John Mica	33-50	-17	43	46	-3	41	49	-8	-5
FL-15	45.6	Dennis Ross	23-38	-15	38	45	-7	42	50	-8	-1
FL-25	48.7	Mario Diaz-Balart	36-46	-10	43	46	-3	43	48	-5	-2
IL-06	45.1	Peter Roskam	35-48	-13	45	48	-3	43	49	-6	-3
IL-16	45.2	Adam Kinzinger	39-39	0	49	37	12	46	45	1	-11
MI-03	45.8	Justin Amash	37-49	-12	43	47	-4	43	49	-6	-2
MI-04	45.5	Dave Camp	39-42	-3	45	42	3	45	45	0	-3
NJ-05	47.9	Scott Garrett	39-46	-7	44	49	-5	45	50	-5	0
NJ-07	46.3	Leonard Lance	32-42	-10	43	43	0	40	48	-8	-8
NJ-11	46.6	Rodney Frelinghuysen	35-41	-6	42	47	-5	42	50	-8	-3
NY-22	48.8	Richard Hanna	41-37	4	45	39	6	40	48	-8	-14
OH-01	46.3	Steve Chabot	33-46	-13	45	43	2	47	46	1	-1
OH-10	48.2	Mike Turner	44-43	1	48	44	4	44	49	-5	-9
OH-15	46.3	Steve Stivers	31-45	-14	40	47	-7	40	50	-10	-3
OH-16	45.2	Jim Renacci	33-48	-15	41	48	-7	42	50	-8	-1
PA-15	47.9	Charlie Dent	40-38	2	48	35	13	45	40	5	-8
PA-16	46.3	Joe Pitts	34-50	-16	40	44	-4	42	48	-6	-2
VA-01	45.6	Rob Wittman	39-36	3	48	41	7	47	43	4	-3
VA-04	48.8	Randy Forbes	44-38	6	47	43	4	45	47	-2	-6
VA-05	45.9	Robert Hurt	34-42	-8	42	47	-5	40	50	-10	-5
WI-06	45.8	Tom Petri	37-41	-4	45	46	-1	44	49	-5	-4
WI-08	47.6	Reid Ribble	42-46	-4	47	44	3	45	47	-2	-5