Some early clues about how the midterms will go

Over that time, the generic-ballot polling average has missed the national House popular vote margin by an average of only 4.1 points. And it’s been even more accurate in recent midterms, when there has been a larger sample size of polls to consider. Since 1998, the generic-ballot polling average has missed the popular vote by an average of only 2.8 points.

Currently,4 Republicans lead generic-ballot polls by an average of 0.5 points. And although there’s still time for that to change before Election Day, generic-ballot polling has historically tended to get worse for the president’s party as the cycle wears on. So we can be pretty confident that Republicans will still have the polling lead on Nov. 8, and that the final generic-ballot polling average will be close to the final election result. But that doesn’t mean we know how big of a lead Republicans will hold by November and, potentially, win the 2022 popular vote by.