With 7 months until midterms, GOP has upper hand in battle for House: polls

With just over seven months to go until November’s midterm elections, a closely watched barometer in the battle for Congress is spelling trouble for Democrats as they aim to defend their slim majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Forty-six percent of registered voters questioned in an NBC News national poll said they preferred a GOP-controlled Congress, compared to 44% who said they wanted Democrats to retain control.

HIGHER INTEREST RATES GIVE GOP EDGE IN MIDTERMS: FOX NEWS POLL

That two-point margin in the NBC News survey, which was conducted March 18-22, is the same as in a Fox News national poll in the field a few days earlier. And an average of all the most recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics with a generic ballot question – which asks whether a respondent would vote for an unnamed Democrat or Republican candidate in their congressional district – indicates the GOP with a 3.1-point advantage.

Going past the toplines, both the Fox News and NBC News polls point to a sizable enthusiasm gap for Democrats.

Republican voters questioned in the Fox News poll were 8 points more likely than Democrats to be extremely interested in the upcoming elections, and 7 points more likely to say the outcome is extremely important to them. And that enthusiasm gap was a larger 17-points in the NBC News survey.

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Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News poll along with Democrat Chris Anderson, said that the enthusiasm gap currently “is a major problem for the Democrats; it is turning a close election contest into a potential Republican landslide.” 

And Anderson noted that “even from the Democratic perspective, these are numbers that should worry Democrats.”

Enthusiasm is often a more important factor in lower turnout midterm elections that it is in higher turnout president elections.

Also troubling for Democrats – Republicans hold a 10-point lead…