It is one poll, and yes Monmouth does have a slight D bias and small samples. The fact that it's a +4 D lead with Likely voters should be notable. I'm not predicting that's whats going to happen (see the bolded above). I'm pointing out that it's a critical point where the House comes into play, and that tightening has become a trend. But to you, it seems pointing something out is conflated with a prediction, as you recommended a post that was a strawman. This isn't the first time either.
We haven't had very much polling in House races this year, and most of it has been internals for either party. Given that Republicans didn't even realize a lot of races that got no attention were competitive in '16, I don't expect many of them to realize some of their targets this year either. Their party elites are even more out of touch with reality than the Democrats, so it's not surprising. If a D+3 PV is a "red wave" (which is where the house could flip) than I don't know what else to say.
I use the "recommend" option to express "agree" rather than "like" (otherwise I’d be way more hesitant about using it because it does create a toxic atmosphere in many cases). Anyway, my point was more that if you consider Monmouth’s methodology fundamentally flawed, why would you trust their numbers in this particular case? In some of your previous posts, you’ve even suggested that pollsters aren’t trying to reach Republican voters, yet you’re quick to buy into national polling whenever it suits your narrative of a tight race/more Republican-friendly environment.
I agree with you that Republican strategists are completely incompetent and unable to come up with an effective target map which isn’t based on districts' PVIs/voting patterns from three elections ago, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Republicans have been releasing far fewer internals than Democrats this cycle and would instead take that as a sign that the environment hasn’t markedly improved for the party since 2018, although I’m sure you’ll disagree. You could also make a case that a 3-4-point PV loss won’t be enough to actually flip the House due to the redrawn Congressional maps under the Trump presidency, Republican recruitment failures, an ineffectual Republican strategy/target map (see xingkerui's post), the proportion of Democratic/Republican incumbents as opposed to two years ago, and the sheer number of Democratic pick-up opportunities in TX alone.
It’s completely reasonable to predict that Republicans will hold the Senate, but I don’t see how the math is there in the House this year. They could come close on a good night, but even narrowly flipping it would require an unprecedented (for this cycle) shift in the environment. We can debate what constitutes a "red wave" until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that the absolute best-case scenario for Republicans is still a much closer result than any Democratic best-case scenario.
In any case, I don’t see why polling would suddenly tighten from +6-8 to +3 when this kind of Democratic environment has been stable for years now. Maybe I’d be more inclined to subscribe to your theory if 2018 hadn’t been such an unmitigated disaster for Republicans or at least seen significant tightening in the home stretch, but this seems to me to be a case of wishful thinking on your part when one considers the big picture (although I’d love to be proven wrong).
