Is the fifth time the charm for the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF)? No, it is not. Once again, the CLF, which is the largest player in House races on the Republican side, has released a poll that doesn’t even include a hint about the presidential contest—even though you’ll almost always find that data in surveys put out by Democrats. And this is now the one-two-three-four-fifth time the PAC has done so in just the last few weeks.
Why? Well, either the numbers just flat-out suck for Donald Trump, or they didn’t even ask about his prospects at all to avoid bringing down Trump’s wrath. And frankly, the results they did share aren’t even all that great for them: The poll, from Harper Polling, finds Democrat Rita Hart tied with Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks at 41 apiece in Iowa’s open 2nd Congressional District, but with Joe Biden very probably ahead here, all of those undecided voters likely lean toward Hart. (Daily Kos Elections rates the race Lean Democratic.)
About three weeks ago, CNN’s Harry Enten published an analysis showing that the rate that one party releases internal polls compared to the other correlates quite well with overall November election performance. At the time, the ratio was extremely lopsided in Democrats’ favor, with Team Blue responsible for 93% of all partisan House polls, presaging another Republican wipeout.
Since that piece came out, CLF has been busy flooding the zone with whatever polling looks remotely passable, but with their surveys shorn—or bereft—of the most important data of all, the effort hasn’t convinced any serious analysts to change their views of what’s coming in the fall.