Generic Ballot

Two weeks ago people were making a big deal out of a few polls like Gallup and Newsweek that had the Democrats doing better. Had the Republicans peaked? Not quite. Both of these forecasters were using registered voters. In this cycle those will look more Democratic than likely voters.



I've divided September into an early and late. So it has two points on here. The likely voter polls have averaged 7.3 in early September, 6.7 in late September, and now 7.2 in October. From January through August, only 2-3 pollsters were using likely voter, so September is a good place to start looking. I used the lower number for Gallup because Republicans +18 looks too high. Interestingly, Rasmussen is now the most favorable pollster for Democrats. For the last year, Democrats have yelled that Rasmussen is too Republican leaning.

The green line is "registered voters." It's true that "registered voters" were trending Republican until mid-September. Late September polls were only Republican +1. October is shown as even, but that's only because no pollster has polled the generic ballot using only registered voters. Thus, Likely and All voters are the same here.