The problem with the theory that these polls are actual harbingers of a "candidate quality wave" in the sense that Republican Senate candidates will dramatically underperform the HPV/generic Republican strength due to their extreme ideological positions and/or their poor favorability ratings is that it doesn’t explain races like this or NV, where Republican candidates have far fewer "glaring issues" in terms of their "quality" and yet still perform way below where you would expect them to perform given the fundamentals of the year and their respective states. Given that the polling available to us shows Democrats with similar 'overperformances' in NC/NV/IA/MO/etc. as in races with more "controversial" Republican candidates, it’s highly likely that this is a (and yet another) systemic issue.
Difference is Fetterman is actually hitting 50 or close. Here it’s 43-40, junk poll with that many undecideds.
And speaking of PA, Biden also consistently hit around 50 there and that’s around what he got. Trump just picked up most of the undecideds. Even if that happens again this year for the Rs though, which there really is no reason to assume as polling has been more accurate in every recent midterm than in 2016/2020, they’re in trouble in states where the Democrats have a high floor. Especially if that floor is a majority, obviously. And especially when their candidates have atrocious favorability ratings and are down significantly with independents, i.e. Oz. So just because this poll might not be a “harbinger of a candidate quality wave” doesn’t matter when you have Fetterman trouncing Oz and getting 49 or 50%, even with LV screens. It’s totally unrelated and you know it, you’re just spinning.
Even in the 2014 GOP wave year, early polls with this many undecideds showed Grimes competitive with or even leading McConnell, but all the Rs came home to him in the end and polling reflected that as the race drew nearer. This is much more similar to that than any evidence that candidate quality is irrelevant in other races (here it’s probably just a matter of name recognition at this point if anything), or that there is another systematic error. You can cope and wish for that all you want, but there is no actual evidence of it.
Also the generic ballot is essentially tied now, so it wouldn’t even take a drastic underperformance for Rs to be hurt by nominating lousy nominees for Senate races, something that happened in 2010 when they clearly had a big wave in the House.
