For quite a long time, Scott Rasmussen was the only pollster showing Republicans leading on the Congressional ballot, just as he was the only one showing Obama with sub-55% approval ratings. In late July, NPR showed Republicans with a one-point lead, and a few days ago, Pew research showed Democrats with a one-point lead. Given the Republicans' tendency to overperform the generic polling, that's a win for Republicans.

Now Democratic polling firm PPP shows Republicans with a four point lead over Democrats in the generic ballot. Perhaps more disturbing for Democrats, they show Congressional Democrats with approval ratings similar to those of Republicans.

To put this in perspective, from 2005 through 2009, Republicans led in exactly one (1) generic ballot poll. In 2004, they led in nine samples all year. Even in the mini-tsunami of 2002, Republicans fared poorly in the generic balloting. With the PPP poll, Republicans will likely take the lead in the RCP average.

In 2005-06 people were slow to come around to the idea that Democrats could pick up the 15 seats they needed to take control of Congress, much less the 30 they eventually won. I'm really starting to wonder if we're not seeing a similar effect in 2009.