Generic Congressional Ballot Tied Again This Week

With less than three weeks to Election Day, Democrats and Republicans remain in a near tie on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose the Democratic candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Forty-four percent (44%) would opt for the Republican. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Since Rasmussen Reports began the weekly surveying in early May, Democrats have led every week but one in mid-August when the two parties were tied at 44% apiece. But the Generic Congressional Ballot tightened up into a tie last week following the conclusion of the controversial Senate confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

Separate surveying found that Republicans are madder about the Kavanaugh controversy than Democrats are and more determined to vote in the upcoming elections because of it.

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 October 7-11, 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. 

At this time in 2014, prior to the last non-presidential year congressional elections, the two parties were tied at 40% each. Republicans went on to gain control of the Senate in those elections and increase their majority in the House of Representatives.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans prefer the candidate from their party, while just as many Democrats (83%) opt for their party's candidate. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Democrats post a negligible 37% to 35% lead. But 28% of unaffiliated voters either prefer someone else or are undecided.

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.

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. 

As voters get ready to head to the polls in the upcoming elections, voters are much more confident in Congress these days on the heels of the Kavanaugh confirmation than they have been in more than a year. 

Hillary Clinton last week urged Democrats not to be civil with Republicans over political issues, prompting rare disagreement from former First Lady Michelle Obama. Voters also disagree with Clinton but, unlike her, don’t expect things to improve even if Democrats return to power in Congress.

Voters see President Trump as more of a positive than they did a year ago.

Voters are now more confident than they have been in over six years that U.S. elections are fair to voters, though more than one-in-four still think it’s too easy to vote in this country today.

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

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