It has become obvious in the years since 2010 (when the Republicans got control of the House of Representatives) that they only way to cure the gridlock in Washington is for Democrats to win back control of the House. That's because the GOP has made it very clear that as long as it controls the House, the obstruction of everything the president tries to do will continue. Unfortunately, most political pundits give the Democrats no chance of winning a House majority.But that may not be true. Political pundits have been wrong in the past, and a new poll shows that is again a possibility. Public Policy Polling has done new surveys in the 24 most competitive Republican-held congressional districts, and the results should encourage Democrats. You can go here to see the results of each individual district, but the overall results are shown in the charts above.
Note that currently voters prefer a generic Democrat to their current Republican representative in 17 of those 24 districts, while the GOP representative is preferred in 5 districts and 2 districts are currently tied. Voters seem to be unhappy with the Republican obstructionism. And the current government shutdown may hurt GOP chances of keeping the House even more. The bottom chart shows voter preference after learning their GOP representative supported the shutdown -- with 21 districts showing a preference for a Democrat, while only 3 districts wanting to keep their Republican representative.
It has generally been thought that the effective gerrymandering done by Republicans in 2010 will insure they can keep control of the House, and that might be true. But that gerrymandering, while creating many safe GOP districts, could not make every GOP-held district a safe one. And if they keep up their obstructionism and make the government shutdown an extended one, they could well lose some of the more competitive districts.
It will only take 17 of those districts going to the Democrats to flip the House of Representatives, and that may now be possible.
