Interesting Results in the Generic Congressional Poll

With all the noise going on this past weekend over Foleygate, you would assume it would have a devastating effect on GOP chances in November. Maybe not:

Republicans trail Democrats by double digits when likely voters are asked which party they prefer in November's congressional elections, and just 38 percent of all Americans say most GOP incumbents should be re-elected, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday.

The poll, conducted Friday through Monday by Opinion Research Corporation, gave Democrats a 53-42 percent edge over Republicans in the so-called generic ballot, which does not survey individual congressional districts. The Democratic figure is down slightly from a poll conducted last week, which showed the party at 55 percent, while the GOP 's support remained
static.

The survey of 1,014 American adults, including 548 likely voters, was conducted for CNN from Friday through Sunday. It has a sampling error of 3 percentage points for all respondents and 4.5 percentage points for likely voters.

Most Americans -- 57 percent -- said they believe their own congressman or woman deserves re-election. Thirty-three percent disagreed, while 10 percent had no opinion.

Although the GOP still trails, the Dems lost 2 points while the GOP support remained the same. I wouldn't have expected that. The last paragraph also points out the inherent flaw in the generic poll - it doesn't look at individual races, but looks at overall impressions. If 57% of people believe their representative should be reelected, the chances of a large change in the makeup of the House is not that good.