Field Poll: Congressional Generic Ballot

The last(?) portion of Field's California poll is out with Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot by 17%. They're using their general election electorate (44%D/29%R), not their primary electorate (42%D/37%R). Democrats would lead the primary generic ballot by 10% with these breakdowns. In 2012, Democrats won the congressional vote by 24%, 62%-38%. That, however, includes a lot of safely Democratic districts, some of which had two Democrats and no Republicans on the ballot. In competitive districts, the average Democrat did 3.2% worse than Barack Obama. So the congressional vote was actually closer to 59%D-41%R. Of course this poll also includes non-competitive safe Democratic districts. So this poll could be better for the GOP than those results. Republicans lost several districts by only a handful of points in 2012, so doing a little better on the generic ballot would be enough to flip districts.