In 2002, there were four generic congressional ballot polls that were conducted entirely during the final week of midterm campaign: ABC, Gallup, Pew and CBS. Their results were as follows:
Rep Dem ABC 48 48 Gallup 51 45 Pew 44 46 CBS 47 40 Mean 47.5 44.8 Actual 51.0 47.5(source for the final results)
That's actually pretty accurate: the mean of the four polls came very close to the actual margin, with 56% of the undecideds going to Republicans, and 44% going to Democrats--nearly an even split. Interested, I went and checked out the final 2004 congressional ballot results. Again, there were four polls conducted entirely during the final week of the campaign, but this time they were conducted by GW, Gallup, NBC and Newsweek. The results were as follows:
Rep Dem GWU 47 44 Gallup 47 48 NBC 43 44 News 49 44 Mean 46.5 45.0 Actual 50.1 47.5Once again, the simple mean of the final generic ballot polls came very close to the final margin. According to these four polls, 59% of undecideds went to Republicans, and 41% went to Democrats. This is close to an even split, and well within the margin of error.
Granted, this isn't much data, but it does at least suggest that generic congressional ballot polls can be understood as a fairly accurate predictor of the popular vote in the House, or at least as (in)accurate as other types of polls. With this in mind, check out the generic congressional ballot polls by non-partisan outfits over the past two months (again, there are four):
Rep Dem NBC 38 45 Zogby 33 38 Westhill 37 39 Gallup 36 47 Mean 36.0 42.3Now, not all of these questions are identical, it is still a long way out, and there are a ton of undecideds. Still, it is nice to see Democrats with a six-point lead, and to know that such a lead is not entirely meaningless. If we have a similar lead in early November 2006, we could very well be poised to take back the House. .
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