Democratic landslide may be building

[updated]

By Diane Silver

Chris Bowers at MyDD has just posted a new poll showing that Democrats are currently leading in enough Congressional districts to take a 19-seat majority in the House.

This information comes from a company that does automated telephone polling. Depending on the district, the polls were completed at the end of August, in September or just this week.

Bowers writes:

The new Majority Watch from Constituent Dynamics will be released in a few minutes. Based on 63 polls of 48 districts of 1,000 likely voters each, they will show Democrats currently ahead in the House by 19 seats, 224-205, or the exact, 19-seat margin of the Republican Majority after the 2002 elections. It is also a significant increase from the 219-214 seat lead for Democrats found in the Majority Watch polling from late August and early September.

This 19-seat lead will not even include seven competitive, Republican-held districts that are currently being polled, and six districts that are currently tied. In fact, perhaps most stunningly, the districts with "safe" leads outside the margins of error break 217-198 in favor of Democrats. The previous set of polls actually showed Republicans ahead on safe seats, 205-199. Further, since TX-22 was not polled, that means Democrats already have the magic 218, outside the margin of error, with between 19 and 26 more races in the "toss-up" category. This is a looming landslide.

Combined with the Pew Research Center survey released yesterday this may be good news indeed.

However, I do wonder at the accuracy of automated polls. Were folks who only use cell phones included? How might that skew the results?

Gosh, I think I'm afraid to hope. Could we actually put a check on George W. Bush?

Meanwhile, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is reporting on the Republican's decision to end their efforts to knock off four Democratic incumbents.

Marshall notes that shifting money at this point in a campaign cycle isn't unusual, but it is a sign that the GOP is focused on playing defense. After looking at these latest poll results, Republicans have every reason to be worried.

Update
Some of the margins are very tight, and some of the polls are a tad old, so take this all with a grain of salt. The key thing, as always, will be the old fashioned get-out-the-vote effort. That's true in the Jim Ryun-Nancy Boyda race in Kansas and in other districts around the nation.

In other words, it's up to us to vote, get our friends to vote, drive our relatives and our neighbors to the polling place and to hook up with groups organizing GOTV efforts.