More U.S. adults expect Democrats to take control of the House than expect Republicans to keep it, while predictions for the Senate are nearly even, according to a new national survey. The findings measure what people think will happen in November, not how they plan to vote or the likely outcome in any New York race.
In the Pew Research Center survey, 55% of adults said Democrats would win the House majority and 40% expected Republicans to retain it. On the Senate, 48% expected Republicans to keep control and 46% expected Democrats to win it. Pew surveyed 5,062 U.S. adults from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4.
Expectations follow party ties
The national figures mask sharply different views among partisans. Eighty percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents expected their party to take the House, and 71% expected it to win the Senate. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 68% expected their party to hold the House and 75% expected it to retain the Senate.
Asked to consider both chambers together, 41% of adults predicted Democrats would control both after the election, while 34% predicted Republicans would control both. Another 14% expected Democrats to win the House but Republicans to keep the Senate. Five percent expected the reverse combination, with Republicans holding the House and Democrats taking the Senate. The remaining respondents did not give one of those four combinations.
About two-thirds of each partisan coalition anticipated a sweep by its own side: 65% of Democrats and Democratic leaners expected Democratic control of both chambers, and 62% of Republicans and Republican leaners expected Republicans to retain both. Those figures describe perceptions within national partisan groups, not a forecast derived from district-by-district or state-by-state election results.
Pew calls these questions “citizen forecasts.” They can show the public's expectations as an election approaches, but respondents are not being asked to predict individual contests as analysts would. A national survey of adults also cannot establish how voters in a particular congressional district will cast ballots. The survey did not report separate New York or Finger Lakes results in this analysis.
How Pew conducted the survey
The respondents were members of Pew's probability-based American Trends Panel. According to Pew's survey methodology, 4,874 completed the survey online and 188 by live telephone, in English or Spanish. The results were weighted to account for sampling and nonresponse; the margin of sampling error for the full national sample was plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.
That full-sample margin should not be applied to the smaller partisan groups. Pew also cautions that wording and other practical aspects of polling can introduce error. The 48%-to-46% split in Senate expectations is too narrow to present as a clear public prediction of which party will win.
The survey asked adults for their best guess about which party would hold a majority in each chamber after November's elections. Its answers offer a picture of the political mood before voting, not a count of ballots or a projection for the 120th Congress.
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