Over many election cycles, what’s known as the “generic congressional ballot” has been a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good indicator of how we can expect the U.S. House to fall during the midterm election.
This isn’t as true for U.S. Senate races, which really are their own unique things.
Another truism is that the political party in power, especially the one that holds the White House, tends to go into the midterms with a big disadvantage. The reason for this is simple: the voters who lost the White House two years earlier feel motivated to register their displeasure, while those voters who won the White House tend to be pretty satisfied with things and therefore not as motivated to vote.
Nevertheless, there are always exceptions, and two of the latest generic congressional ballot polls give President Trump and the Republican Party some real hope to hold onto.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll has Republicans down by four points, 42 to 46 percent.
Ah, but the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll has the GOP down by only two points, 38 to 40 percent.
If the Republicans are within two, that’s a good sign. As we all know, pollsters tend to underestimate Republican turnout because most pollsters are leftists more interested in wishcasting and manipulating public opinion than reporting on it.
Trends within specific polls matter, so let’s look at those…
In the previous Economist/YouGov poll, the GOP was down by five points, so that’s a move of a single point in the desired direction.
In the previous Reuters/Ipsos poll, the GOP was down five points, so that’s a three-point move in the desired direction.
The RealClearPolitics poll of polls shows the Democrats up by 5.2 points, or 48.4 to 43.2 percent. That spread has been fairly consistent for a few months now.
There is more to look at…
As in all elections, turnout will matter, and right now Trump is historically popular within his own party, and the sorry and extremist Democratic Party is hugely unpopular.
Also, Trump has announced an unprecedented midterm political convention, which means he understands how important turnout will be. He wants to stoke the base and make his case to the public.
Finally, the Republican Party enjoys an impressive funding advantage in House races. The RNC has $129 million compared to the DNC’s 16.3 million. The NRCC has $14 million more than the DCCC — $93 million to $79 million.
There will be a ton of news cycles between now and Election Day, along with an equal number of surprises. So we are still in Anything Can Happen Land.
My primary point here is that if you only paid attention to the media, you’d think the GOP had zero chance of holding on to the House. Well, that simply is not true. That wouldn’t be true regardless of the polling because Trump is the only person in the country who has a national movement behind him, and it’s one of the largest political movements in American history. That matters. Turnout will win or lose the House, and Trump can turn them out.
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