Those of us (myself included) who highlighted Gallup’s finding last week that Republicans had jumped to an unprecedented 10-point lead in the generic congressional ballot, are obliged to note that in this week’s poll Gallup finds that the gap has closed completely, and the two parties are tied at 46%.
As Jay Cost notes, the internals of the poll are still horrendous for the Democrats (and indeed, a tied result on the generic ballot question is horrendous for the Democrats too, as they generally hold a comfortable lead on that question even in years with close elections; in fact, in the last Gallup poll before the 1994 elections (in which Republicans gained 54 House seats), the Democrats had a two-point lead on the generic ballot). Still, a 10-point swing in a week in which nothing much seems to have happened and in which other polls have not moved surely suggests at the very least that we ought not to make too much of one week of good results or bad results for either party on that particular survey.