Alexander McClure reported on the latest Gallup Poll numbers yesterday, and noted the "generic ballot" question - which reads, "Do you intend to vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress this year?" or words to that effect - had closed to 2%, a statistical dead heat.
As we have discussed before, the generic ballot and the "right track/wrong track" questions aren't necessarily predictive of results anyway. John Podhoretz of the New York Post expands:
Franklin says unhesitatingly that the atmosphere is now very favorable to Democrats - and even that, if today's situation were analogous to elections before 1992, Republicans would surely lose control of the House. The size of the Democratic advantage in the generic ballot, even accounting for the bias, would once have been enough to flip lots of seats nationally - since it indicates that Democrats should get something like 6 percent more votes nationally in November than Republicans.
"From 1946-1992, a one-percentage point gain in the Democratic share of the national vote produced a gain of 8.2 [House] seats (and vice versa for Republicans)," Franklin writes. But: "Since 1994, a one-point gain in votes has produced a gain of only 1.9 seats."
Read the whole column at link above. Professor Franklin of the University of Wisconsin was dealing with generic ballot polls showing a 6% Democratic edge at the time of his comments.
Permalink | Send To A Friend | Linking Blogs | Digg this!
Filed under:
Commentary, Congressional Races, Polls
Comments (2)
Consider <a href="http://fr... (Below threshold)1. Posted by FreeKeys | August 22, 2006 11:09 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Consider this.
1. Posted by FreeKeys | August 22, 2006 11:09 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on August 22, 2006 23:09
2. Posted by Jim Addison | August 22, 2006 11:20 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Good stuff!
The more people see the record - and I think most voters already know it - the more realize Democrats simply cannot be trusted with our national security.
They lost their nerve with Vietnam, forced us to cut and run from there, and never regained their nerve at all.
They kept the policy, though.
When a voter draws the blind in the voting booth, deep down inside they will realize this and vote accordingly.
They will, because they must. Or we are really, really screwed.
2. Posted by Jim Addison | August 22, 2006 11:20 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on August 22, 2006 23:20