In today’s Jolt, a look at yesterday’s surprising generic ballot numbers from Gallup:

At Red State, Neil Stevens offers an interesting interpretation, using a “swingometer,” which I’d like to imagine resembles an invention from Rube Goldberg: “Right now, that means Gallup of all polls, using Registered Voters, is projecting in the Swingometer a 60 seat Republican gain for a 238 R-197 D majority. The last time an election took the Democrats that low was the election of 1946, saith Wikipedia. Election night in 2004 took them to 202 for the second lowest. Rasmussen today, by contrast, shows only a 20 point swing, a 57 seat Republican gain, and a 235 R – 200 D majority, still lower than an election since Truman has taken the House Democrats. If I then take the mean of these two and double weight the Rasmussen Likely Voter poll, I get R+58, the new projection.”
Not even Matt Yglesias can spin this one away. You’ll be glad to know that the idiot commenters at his site are even idiotic when they criticize the host, accusing him of ignoring the Newsweek poll that showed a tie – we dismantled that one yesterday – and speculating, “Maybe he is trying to be sensastionalist [sic] for the ad revenue?” If so, he’s doing a terrible job at it, as Yglesias’ blog is the least sensationalist — heck, least sensational! – blog I’ve run across, and I see precisely one ad on his site.
Andrew Malcom also notes the contrast with the Newsweek poll: “It all comes down to which poll do you believe: the one by the troubled weekly magazine that was just sold for $1 to a 92-year-old businessman who’s married to a Democratic congresswoman? Or the one by the 75-year-old, highly-respected professional polling organization?”
The good news is, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the GOP has an advantage on the generic ballot, which is a big deal. And you don’t need me to tell you that this looks like the best year for the GOP since 2002, and is probably going to be a much better year than that.
A reader wondered about whether this is setting expectations unrealistically high, but lately I’ve been thinking about the season-opening speech from poetically profane New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, about expectations: “Last year, ‘hey, we were under the radar, that’s a good place to be…’ [To heck with] that! The best place to be is when expectations are HIGH. Get used to it. We’re going to give you our best game, and we’re going to beat the [heck] out of ya. How’s that? Let’s go get it.”
The best always face high expectations.
Still, the DNC’s former New Media Outreach Director is taking the long view: “We’re going to win a lot of Senate seats in 2016.” I guess the GOP is falling into the trap.

The rest of the day’s blogging will be light, as I am on daddy duties.