According to the most recent Washington Post poll, which indicates a narrowing of the Democrat lead among likely voters on the generic ballot from 14 points to 6:

What’s really interesting is that if we roll back the clock on this poll to immediately before the 1994 mid-term elections (deemed the “Republican Revolution” after the GOP was swept into power) we see that the Dems had a 5 point at that time too:

Encouraging stuff, but is this enough?

We’ll see, but a big swing in the polls like this right before the election holds up my previously stated theory about media hype in this election.

I think the media establishment have actually bought into their own hype.  I think they’ve convinced themselves that Iraq is an utter failure, that the economy is awful (or weak, at best) and that because of those two things nobody except for the most partisan of right-wingers will be pulling the lever for the GOP on Tuesday.  To support themselves in these beliefs they cite poll after poll showing Democrat candidates leading all over the country, but they never stop to consider history which shows that these polls consistently oversample more liberal voters and haven’t really been accurate in predicting Republican election wins in the past.

I’ve been saying it for a couple of weeks and I’ll say it again: The Republicans are going to lose some seats, but they’re going to hold on to majorities in both houses of Congress.

And if that happens, it will be a major defeat for the Democrats.  Historically, the party of a Presidential administration that has been in office two terms always loses seats in the House during the second-term’s mid-term election.

Truman lost 29 in 1950.

Eisenhower lost 48 seats in 1958.

LBJ lost 47 in 1966.

Gerald Ford lost 48 in 1974.

Ronald Reagan (something of an outlier) lost 5 in 1986.

Clinton actually gained five seats in 1998, but the average loss since the Truman administration is about 28 or 29 seats.  If the Democrats can’t even get the 15 seats they need in the House to take back the majority it will be a loss, even if they do pick up ground in overall seats.  There’s just no other way to look at it.