Generic Congressional Ballot

Generic Congressional Ballot Is Dead Even

For the first time in months, Democrats and Republicans are tied on the Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest telephone and online survey finds that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose the Democratic candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Another 44% would now opt for the Republican. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

A week ago, Democrats held a 48% to 41% lead on the generic ballot.

This is the first time the parties have been tied since May. The Democrats regained their lead in early June and have maintained it since then. In early July, Democrats led by eight, their largest lead since January.

Rasmussen Reports is updating the Generic Congressional Ballot findings weekly on Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m. Eastern until the midterm elections in November.

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The survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted on August 12-16, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, all 435 seats are on November’s ballot. Republicans now have a 47-seat majority in the House, so Democrats would need to take away 24 GOP seats to gain control. The big problem is that all but about 50 of the seats are shoo-ins for the party that now holds them.

In the U.S. Senate, 32 seats are up for grabs this November, but 23 of them are now held by Democrats. So Democrats need to hold all 23 of those and pick up two of the Republican seats to win control of the Senate.

Forty-three percent (43%) of all voters now say the country is headed in the right direction. This compares to the mid- to high 20s for most weeks during 2016, President Obama’s last full year in office.

Consumer and economic confidence in general remains at or near record highs.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a hopeful for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, said recently, “We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great.” One-in-five Democrats agree, but a sizable majority of all voters thinks he was off-base.

As the nation gears up for midterm elections, half of voters say they’ve voted independent and think the nation would benefit from a strong third party.

Republicans have more allegiance to their political party than Democrats.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.