GOP Lead On Generic Ballot Hinting At Late Break In 2014 Midterms

The Republican Party is beginning to widen their lead over Democrats on the PPD average of generic ballot surveys in the final weeks of the 2014 midterms. There has been slow but steady movement toward the GOP since the mid-summer months, with Democrats losing a small but tenuous lead among registered voters in post-Labor Day likely voter models.

However, now, the Republican candidates are preferred even by registered voters for the first time this cycle in the NBC News/Wall St. Journal/Annenberg Poll, and have increased their margin in the other surveys. Other pundits have been suggesting the generic ballot was remarkably stable and, to some extent, that’s true. But the trend has shown a pretty clear and consistent move to the GOP, which appears to be speeding up a bit.

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Republicans hold a 4.2-point lead on the average generic ballot as of Wednesday — with just under 2 weeks until Election Day — which is outside the margin of error and significant when you consider how long early voting has been underway. In August, we discussed just how critical the generic ballot results were to election outcomes in the month of September, and suggested the numbers pointed to further Republican gains. Until the summer and early fall of the actual midterm election year, the results of the generic congressional ballot have little predictive value.

Further, the better Republicans are performing on the survey in early September, the more actual seats the Republican Party is likely to gain, which may skew early predictions in favor of the Democratic Party. Also, historically Republicans pick up more seats on a point-for-point basis. In other words, on average, a 10-point advantage for Democrats yields just a 12-seat swing, while an identical lead for Republicans yields a 23-seat swing, on average.

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From the table above, we get a visual picture both of how much the generic congressional ballot understates Republican support, and the daunting task facing Democrats. Considering Republican redistricting after their 2010 gains, it is entirely possible that this model actually understates their support further, though their potential pick-up opportunities — as I’ll explain further shortly — will most likely limit any chance to properly gauge that in 2014.

As we have hammered over and over, presidential job approval is a statistically significant variable when gauging midterm election outcomes since 1980. In 2010, though the Democrats aren’t as exposed in the House this year, President Obama’s approval rating was roughly 45 percent. In fact, because there are fewer opportunities in 2014 and Republican pickup opportunities are likely to be limited, we might expect less damage this time around even though Obama’s approval rating may just be lower.

Since 1912, when the House expanded to 435 seats, the president’s party has lost an average of 29 House seats in the “six year itch” midterm election. However, Democratic losses are likely to be limited in 2014 due to the fact that Democrats are only defending 201 seats this year, and it is all about the particular districts.

The U.S. Senate races, however, are another story.