[EllaMinnow]

Here are the specs from the article:


IF THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS for U.S. Congress were held today, more registered voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate (47 percent) than the Republican candidate (40 percent) in their district. Thirteen percent say the would vote for another party’s candidate or are undecided. That’s a turnabout from the NEWSWEEK poll taken just after President George W. Bush’s Sept. 12 speech on Iraq to the United Nations, when 43 percent said they would vote for the GOP candidate, vs. 41 percent fot he Democrat.


I say "ptoooey!"
I've never put much stock into generic congressional polls. Way too many variables.

[John Jorsett]

I've never put much stock into generic congressional polls. Way too many variables.

Not to mention that polls that address 'registered voters' are pretty much worthless. Only the 'likely voter' ones get any attention from me, and not even much then. The best of the lot are the internal polls that get leaked, although you have to take even those with a grain of salt, since the 'leak' could be a flat-out lie for strategic reasons.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

IF THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS for U.S. Congress were held today, more registered voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate (47 percent) than the Republican candidate (40 percent) in their district.

That's actually a Republican lead as the poll is typical of registered voters and not of likely voters.

[Common Tator]

IF THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS for U.S. Congress were held today, more registered voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate (47 percent) than the Republican candidate (40 percent) in their distric

Notice that this is not likely voters but registered voters. Any poll that only polls registered voters is not worth much.

Secondly the house depends on Gerrymandering. From 1940 until 1990 the districts were gerrymandered to favor Democrats. Thus in the 1984 election when Reagan won the biggest victory in legislative history, and republicans got more votes for the house than Democrats, the Democrats still held the house.

In 1996 the democrats won the presidency and in 2000 it was a tie but in both cases Gerrymandering saw to it the Republicans held the house. In the 2000 redisctricting the Republicans gerrymandered a very few more seats. So this house will be easier to win than in 2000.

The majority of people in the USA still consider them selves Democrats. If you ask them are they going to vote for the Democrat they say yes. They may or may not be what they do on election day.

But the most important thing is turn out. When you only poll Registered voters you don't factor in turn out. The truth is Democrats have more trouble with turn out than do Republicans. There are more Democrats than REpublicans, but it is hard to get Democrats out to vote. If any of you have ever been involved in a race on behalf of the democratic side you know just how hard it is to get the Democrats out to vote.

Most of the lefts get out the vote efforts are taken care of by labor unions. I doubt if they will have the effort they did in 2000. But even if they do, they won't do any better than they did in 2000. And if they have less of an effort they will have fewer voters in 2002 than they did in 2000.

Say what you will about GORE, but he did a better job of getting out the Democratic vote than any Democratic presidential candidate in history. Gore got more votes than Clinton, Gore got more votes than Carter. Gore got more votes than Bush Sr in 1988. Gore got more votes than anyone in presidential history except Ronald Reagan

Gore is not running this year. I doubt the Democratic effort will equal 2000.

Know this about leftist media. They always give you the data shaded to make the left look better than it is.

When a Republican is way behind, "Experts say he faces certain defeat"

When a Democrat is way behind the Democrat "Faces the toughest race of his career."