That Poll-Asked Look

NPR has conducted a poll of likely voters in 70 battleground House districts, the ones where Democrats hold the seat where the district voted for McCain in sixty of them, and ten more where Republicans hold the seat, but the district voted for Obama.

The results are somewhat depressing for the Donks.

These are this year's swing seats — the political terrain where the battle for control of the House of Representatives will be won or lost. In this battleground, voters are choosing Republicans over Democrats 49 percent to 41 percent. 

A +8 for the GOP in those districts is bad, bad news, but not surprising.  These are Republican districts for the most part, the places where a Democrat won locally but McCain won nationally.  However, odds are very good that a lot of these seats are going to go back to the GOP.  The question is will it be more than a net gain of 40 for the Republicans where they get control of the House back?

The other problem with this poll is that there's a pretty high margin of error, anywhere from 3.5% to 6.5% based on the district and question, so odds are good that the 8-point GOP lead is closer to 4 or 5.  But 4 or 5 points for the Republican on a generic ballot still means significant losses for the Dems in November.

The final note is that nearly all of the sixty Dems in these districts are by definition Blue Dogs.  And for the most part, they operated as Republicans, not faithful Democrats.  They will not get too much defense from Dem voters this year.  There's a lesson there.