(CNN) First things first: The theme song of the week is Hill Street Blues by Mike Post from the television show "Hill Street Blues."

Poll of the week: A new A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 50% of voters prefer November's election to result in a Democratic-controlled Congress compared with 42% of voters who prefer a Republican-controlled Congress.

This result is in-line with other polls from NBC News/Wall Street Journal and from other generic ballot polls more generally.

What's the point: The big question for the generic ballot is what exactly does it mean?

At the most basic level, the generic ballot can be seen as an estimation of the House popular vote. Given where the generic ballot average is at this point (an 8-point Democratic advantage), there is roughly an 6 to 8 point margin of error in predicting the final vote. In other words, Democrats end up winning by double digits or roughly tied with Republicans. That's far from perfect, though is actually more predictive than an average for a Senate race would be at this point.

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