“If the election were today, the Democrats would take back the House,” said another Republican strategist. “But we’re not far off. Things aren’t great, but I don’t think we’re that far away.”

Of most concern right now, the second strategist said, are those districts with the highest percentages of college graduates. “There are two worlds in polling right now,” he explained. “The great divide is education — more than gender. A college degree seems to be the big dividing line.”…

“We’ve got two more jobs reports and one GDP report coming out before the election,” said the first strategist, “and we’re wondering whether Republicans can get back to focusing on jobs and the economy as opposed to every other issue.”

“If we could have three or four weeks of just calmer waters, we could organically start to do better,” said the second. “People could say the economy is good and Pelosi is bad.”