(CNN) -- With all the focus on a slew of new polls that show President Donald Trump falling further behind former Vice President Joe Biden, one number has largely slipped through the cracks -- and it is a blaring warning signal to Republicans on the ballot this fall.
Here it is: 51% of registered voters said they would prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats in 2021, while just 40% preferred a Republican-controlled Congress, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NBC poll released Sunday. That marks a change in Democrats' favor from January when the party had just a 6-point edge over the GOP on what is known as the "generic ballot" question.
(Side note: it's called the "generic ballot" because no specific candidates named are used. Just the two parties.)
The generic ballot has long been used by political handicappers as a sort of blunt instrument to understand voter sentiment. Think of it as a sort of weather vane that tells you which way the political winds are blowing and, roughly, how strongly.
[...]
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/generic-ballot-house-democrats-republicans/index.html
