Democracy Corps: Democrats with 5 point margin in named Congressional ballot

[swag]

via Atrios:

http://democracycorps.com/reports/analyses/Democracy_Corps_November_6_2006_Memo.pdf

This final survey of the 50 competitive Republican districts, dialed
Thursday night, Saturday morning and Sunday night, shows the Democrats with
a 5-point margin in the named congressional ballot (49 to 44 percent).1 That is
down 2 points from the middle of last week and up 2 points from a week ago. In
fact, the Democrat has polled 49 percent in virtually every survey in October,
while the Republican has been stuck, now at 44 percent. When the undecided is
allocated based on leanings, the Democrats carry this Republican territory, 51 to
46 percent. With the Democrats ahead in the most vulnerable and safest tiers of
seats, Democrats should expect to carry the great majority of them.

So what should people make of the national polls with the Democrats’
congressional generic margin slipping in most polls and overall?
First of all, they should insist next time that pollsters use the named ballot,
because that has proven stable, with a slight shift to Republicans at the end
(more on that below).

In these 50 districts where a gazillion dollars has been
spent educating the voters on the actual candidates, the generic ballot – always
better for Democrats than the real ballot with known incumbents – suddenly
aligned with the real ballot in the final weekend. The generic margin went from
average of 10 over the past week to 4 points (4.4 to be accurate). The Democratic
generic vote was actually stable but the engagement and partisan polarization
has led Republicans to align their generic responses with their real vote at
the very end.

. . . more (pdf)