Days after House speaker Paul Ryan said he would begin focusing solely on preserving the GOP’s House majority, a new poll of congressional races may get Republicans feeling and seeing blue.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey asking likely voters which party they would support in their district if the election were held today showed Democrats with a 10-point advantage, 46 to 36 percent, the largest spread in any such poll this election. The Democratic tilt is old news—the GOP has trailed in the question in all but two major surveys this year—but the expanded lead parallels a swing toward Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.
The poll from Wednesday has a massive gap in party affiliation, however. When factoring in adults “leaning” toward the Democrats or the GOP, 47 percent of the 3,500-plus total respondents identified as Democrats and only 31 percent identified as Republicans. (Likely voters comprised some 2,300 individuals in the sample.) Compare that to the previous Reuters/Ipsos survey, completed October 3, when the split was 43-35 for the Democrats and the Democratic lead was four points.
Democrats additionally held a six-point lead among likely voters in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released Wednesday. The result is also on the upper end of Democratic advantages in recent weeks, which have showed the party leading mostly by two to seven points.
The generic ballot question has been scrutinized for its accuracy in forecasting electoral results, both in terms of raw percentages and how closely the numbers correlate with House seats won by each party. For example, a Washington Post analysis from 2014 found that the final result of the “generic ballot question” was an average of 2.5 percentage points off the ultimate vote total, dating to 2002. Since then, Republicans have generally captured more individual races than the national popular vote total would indicate, and by a significant margin. With a 247-188 majority in the chamber and the general trend of fewer competitive seats each passing election, the GOP has key variables in their favor to help protect control of the House.
But a consistent Democratic advantage stretching to the high single digits would doubtlessly create concern. Some party leaders already have it. National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Greg Walden, who heads the House GOP’s reelection efforts, has said electoral data were trending negative for the party, right as Ryan said he would stop defending Trump and shift all his attention to House races on Monday.
