Cook Political Report published a dated House ratings snapshot on 11 September and changed no seat's rating1. Its topline still reads 206 Democratic seats to 208 Republican, with 21 tossups, the same count it has carried since the batch of six moves towards the Democrats on 3 September. Cook revises in batches and dates each one, so issuing a snapshot that alters nothing is a decision rather than an oversight.
Silver Bulletin's generic-ballot page read D+6.6 at three dated captures, on 1, 11 and 13 September, against a nearly identical D+6.5 at the start of August2. Three readings twelve days apart landing on the same figure rules out a stale page nobody has refreshed. Nate Silver publishes a likely-voter-adjusted version of that average separately, at D+7.6, and treating the two pages as one series manufactures a movement the headline number does not contain. The raw average eased to D+6.1 at the end of June and has sat still since the summer.
Six points of national vote that do not produce a seat majority describe a map advantage rather than an arithmetic error. Democrats lead the generic ballot by 6.6 points; Cook still has Republicans ahead on seats. A generic ballot measures preference across the country and cannot measure district boundaries, which is why both readings can hold at once. Donald Trump's net approval sat at minus 20.6 on 3 August, the worst reading of either of his terms. A month of flat polling on top of that describes a mood that has stopped deteriorating without turning.
