Generic Congressional Ballots, Continued

All of our talk yesterday of Palin's potential huge impact on the generic congressional ballot (GCB) might have been a bit overblown. Two new general ballot polls today showed Democrats with high-single digit, but nonetheless encouraging leads for Democrats.

Rasmussen: 45 percent Democrat, 37 percent Republican

Research 2000: 47 percent Democrat, 40 percent Republican

Interestingly, Rasmussen seems to do a GCB poll every week or so, and a week ago it was 46-36, 46-35 two weeks ago, 46-35 three weeks ago, and 45-37 a month ago. The place we are at now is not terribly far from where it was a month ago, though Democrats have certainly lost a couple of points due to the Palin bounce. Next week's poll will be very key, as it will show if the bounce crested soon after the GOP convention, or is continuing to eat into the Dem lead. Unfortunately, because this is R2K's first tracking poll, it is the only generic ballot number they've released. The good news is that they are going to be doing a daily poll (along with its presidential tracker), so we are going to have reams of data from them starting now.

These numbers should be mostly comforting to Democrats. While a 7-to-8 point margin is not as wide as the leads Democrats were enjoying during the summer when the GOP brand was really in the toilet, it is still a pretty tidy lead. Should Democrats hold onto it, they should still be looking at very solid, but not Tsunami-like results for Congress on election night.

More importantly, it appears that at least so far, Palin's impact on the downballot races is not as profound nationwide as was likely initially feared by Democrats. Instead, what we can probably expect at this point is that Palin will have a larger effect on certain regional races, particularly close races in the south like AL-02, KY-02, LA-04, and others we mentioned yesterday. The usual suspects. It will really be up to the Democratic candidates to strut their stuff and earn wins themselves and not on a Democratic wave that will not crest in their districts given the Palin bounce. We are certainly going to see if guys like Bobby Bright and Paul Carmouche are as deserving of all the accolades they have gotten from here and elsewhere. Wins in these districts would be incredibly impressive.

I will continue to follow the GCB polls, and will post if any major changes occur up to the election. Needless to say, at least for now, Chris Van Hollen's Wheaties should be going down just a little bit easier.