Gallup has held out quite a long time from imposing a likely voter screen on its generic ballot, but that will be coming to an end next week.  The pollster suggests that this could result in a massive swing toward the GOP, perhaps even showing a double-digit GOP win:

Additionally, preliminary modeling of the likely electorate using Gallup's traditional likely voter questions (more on this next week) suggests that if current patterns persist, Republicans could have a double-digit lead in the national House vote on Election Day, which would translate into Republicans gaining well above the number of seats necessary to control the House.

The reason? Gallup has basically been asking people only if they are registered to vote.  If they are, Gallup proceeds to the ballot test questions.  Next week, the likely voter screen will begin probing how frequently these respondents vote, and more importantly, how enthusiastic they are about voting.  This enables Gallup to predict which registerd voters will turn out in the fall.  Republicans are substantially more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats right now, so this will likely move the generic ballot substantially in their direct.

To put it differently, the RV polls in the current RCP Average show a 1.75 point Republican lead, while the likely voter polls currently show a 6.25 point Republican lead.

For a point of reference, in 1994 the GOP won the national vote by 7 points and held 230 seats on election night.  In 2006 the Democrats won the national vote by 8 points and finished with 233 seats.  And in 2008, the Democrats won the national vote by 10.5 points, and finished with 257 seats.  257 Republican seats would translate to a 78-seat pickup.

Three polls released in the last twenty-four hours confirm that Republican Marco Rubio is cruising toward election as the new U.S. Senator from Florida, while Charlie Crist's hopes of making the jump from Governor to Senator are fading fast.

Yesterday surveys from Rasmussen Reports and CNN/Time pegged Rubio's lead over Crist at 11 points, and this morning a poll from Quinnipiac University gives Rubio an even wider 13-point margin over Crist,, 46 to 33, with Democrat Kendrick Meek pulling in 18% support.

Overall, Rubio now holds a 12.2% lead in the RCP Average in Florida.

After falling way behind Rubio early this year in the Republican primary, Crist dropped out of the GOP race at the end of April and announced his candidacy as an Independent. The move bounced Crist into a slight lead over Rubio which lasted throughout the summer. But since the completion of the primary races on August 24, Crist has been bleeding support. The trend appears to have accelerated since Labor Day, as Crist has been pummelled by Rubio and Meek from both the left and the right. (Watch Meek's lastest ad, released yesterday, here.)

In the month of September, Crist has lost nearly four points in the RCP Average, while Meek and Rubio have gained 3.4% and 6.0%, respectively.

Another sign of Rubio's strength, according to the Quinnipiac poll, is that nearly all of his supporters (90%) say their minds are made up.  Support for Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek is far more soft: 29% of Crist's supporters and 38% of Meek's supporters say there is a chance they may change their minds before Election Day.

North Carolina's Wilmington-based 7th District is less Republican than its R+5 PVI implies. True, at the presidential levels it prefers Republicans -- it gave John McCain 52 percent of the vote and George W. Bush 56 percent of the vote in 2004.

But, like most eastern Carolina districts, it will still prefer a conservative, non-national party Democrat to a Republican. In 2008, it gave Elizabeth Dole only 45 percent of the vote in her re-election bid, and gave the Republican gubernatorial candidate only 44 percent of the vote.

This has been the tightrope Democratic Congressman Mike McIntyre has had to walk. He's managed to get re-elected with more than 65 percent of the vote since his first bid in 1996. And he's done so by compiling a relatively conservative voting record. He's consistently rated at the center of the House Democratic caucus, and he even receives the endorsement of the religious conservative organization Focus on the Family.

But Republicans believe that his 2009 votes for Nancy Pelosi for speaker and the stimulus bill, combined with the national budget, make him more vulnerable this year than he has been in the past.

A new poll of the 7th from SurveyUSA seems to confirm this suspicion. The poll of 450 registered voters finds that Ilario Pantano leads McIntyre by a point, 46 percent to 45 percent. Among those who state that they are absolutely certain to vote, Pantano leads by a 57 percent to 38 percent margin. Pantano trails only in New Hanover (Wilmington), Robeson and Pender Counties; Robeson County, where Pantano trails 13-71 is a 30 percent white county with a substantial Native American population.

At any rate, this is what that enthusiasm gap commentators are talking about is all about. If the Democrats can't convince marginal voters (people who rate themselves as a 5-9 on the likelihood to vote scale) to turn out, then this race will be a Republican blowout. If they can convince them to turn out, it will be close and hard fought. That is what this election comes down to with a little more than 30 days to go.

Rasmussen Reports broke with the recent trend in the Ohio Governor's race polling, and shows John Kasich maintaining a healthy lead over Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland.  Rasmussen Reports shows Kasich leading Strickland by eight points, 50 percent to 42 percent.  This is essentially unchanged from a previous poll showing Kasich up 50 percent to 43 percent.

This result is actually consistent with other polls taken in recent days that show a much closer race.  Strickland's numbers in the September polling are remarkably stable:  42, 42, 43, 46, 45, 41, 43, 44, 37, 40, and 43.  Kasich's numbers, on the other hand are all over the place: 50, 43, 45, 47, 49, 47, 50, 51, 54, 52 and 48.

To put it in statistical terms, the standard deviation of Kasich's numbers is quite a bit higher than that of Strickland's (especially if you exclude Quinnipiac's 54-37 result as an outlier).

There are three things to keep in mind here.  First, when we see numbers like these, what is usually going on is that "undecideds" are decidedly leaning one way or the other.  Pollsters that "push" undecideds harder will typically see higher numbers for the candidate those undecideds favor.

Hence, regardless of how many undecideds there are in a given poll, Strickland polls around 42/43 percent, while Kasich's numbers bounce between 43 and 54.

Second, and consistent with the previous observation, we actually see quite a bit of stability in the apples-to-apples poll comparison -- in other words, looking at what pollsters find compared to their earlier iterations.  This is important, because different pollsters use different likely voter screens and push undecided voters in different ways.  If individual pollsters aren't finding movement, the changes in the RCP Average are likely attributable to changes in the mixture of pollsters in the Average, rather than actual movement.

Here, we see that Rasmussen moved to 50/42 Kasich from 50/43 Kasich.  FoxNews/Rasmussen moved to 45/43 Kasich from 47/41 Kasich, with an earlier entry of 48/43 Kasich.  The University of Cincinnati poll showing Kasich up four is actually an improvement from their earlier poll showing Strickland up 5 back in May.  The only pollster showing real movement was Reuters/Ipsos, which moved from 48/39 Kasich in August to 47/46 Kasich in September.

Third, and most importantly, the numbers you need to pay the most attention to here are Strickland's.  Incumbents under 50 percent at this point in the game usually do not win; incumbents under 45 percent almost never win.  Until Strickland consistently posts numbers in the 47/48 point range, he will be the underdog.

Kasich is up by 4.2 points, 48 percent to 43.8, in the RCP Average.

A week ago, Public Policy Polling (D) broke shocking news -- according to their sample, businessman and two-time candidate John Raese was leading Governor Joe Manchin in the race to replace Senator Robert Byrd.

Now Rasmussen Reports confirms the PPP finding.  Its latest sample of the race, taken September 27 among 500 likely voters, shows Raese leading the Governor 48 percent to 46 percent.

Sixty-nine percent of West Virginia voters approve of the job Manchin is doing, but only 30 percent approve of the job Obama is doing.  His situation is becoming untenable because voters have a chance to get both things they want -- Manchin in the governor's mansion, and Raese as a vote in the Senate against the Obama administration.

In the race for retiring Democratic Senator Chris Dodd's seat in Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon has cut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's lead to just three points in the latest poll from Quinnipiac University. Blumenthal leads 49-46 in the poll of 1,083 likely Connecticut voters. The Quinnipiac poll comes a day after Rasmussen Reports released a poll showing Blumenthal leading McMahon by five points, 50-45.

McMahon, who has spent upwards of $20 million of her own money on the contest thus far, has steadily climbed back into the race, narrowing Blumenthal's lead to 10 points in early August and again to seven in September. The former wrestling executive has capitalized on the wave of anti-establishment anger and frustration with President Obama that has bolstered insurgent candidates across the country this election cycle. Seventy-six percent of voters say they are either dissatisfied or angry with the government. Of the 33 percent who said they are "angry" with the government, 78 percent back McMahon.

And despite President Obama earning 60 percent of the vote in the Nutmeg State in 2008, 51 percent of likely Connecticut voters now say they disapprove of the job the president is doing.

Still, slightly more voters have a favorable opinion of Blumenthal (51 percent) than McMahon (42 percent).

In recognition of the tightening race, Blumenthal has enlisted the help of President Obama and former President Bill Clinton. Additionally, the AFL-CIO recently released a mailer attacking McMahon in an attempt to mobilize union voters.

The poll was conducted from September 21st through 26th. It has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin's campaign for the Senate seat long held by the late Democrat Robert Byrd has had a distraction in the last six weeks in the form of a federal investigation.

The Department of Administration and the state Division of Highways were served two subpoenas about contracts awarded in the state for a highway project that runs through Fairmont, where Manchin is from.

Asked by RealClearPolitics on Sunday if he has heard of any updates in the probe, Manchin said, “No. No I haven't." He continued, "As a governor, you're going to have a lot of things that come through. We tell everybody to work in an open and transparent as humanly possible way."

As for whether he knows what prompted the investigation, Manchin said, “It's the political season, so anything and everything is going to be thrown. I've been around long enough understanding that I feel good about our administration. I know that everything we've done and everyone that's been in my administration has done so with one agenda making West Virginia better. If there's some other people that we've had to do some things very difficult that people didn't want done, I understand that. There might be people very upset and complaining. We make bidding. We wanted people to bid. We want to get the best value for the state in everything we've done. Now, we've stepped on the good old systems that have been there for far too long. I'm sure that a lot of that could be part of it.  But we'll find out. It will unfold. It will work itself out.”

West Virginia Republican John Raese hopes that the third time is the charm for him as his party's Senate nominee. Raese lost an open Senate race to Democratic then-Gov. John Rockefeller in 1984, and he lost a challenge to Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd in 2006. This year, he faces the popular Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin in the race to fill Byrd's seat, and the race has grown more competitive than most political observers expected.

Raese mentioned that the logistics of campaigning have changed slightly since some of his past races due to the advent of "Facepage" and "Tweeter."

The candidate has contributed a chunk of his personal wealth to his campaigns in the past, but he told RealClearPolitics on Sunday that he has still been enormously outspent in cycles past. He hopes to join Rockefeller, one of the Senate's wealthiest members, in representing the Mountaineer State -- next to the poorest state in the nation.

Raese fits right into both settings. He appeared equally at ease in sharing memories of his nonagenarian grandmother's aptitude with a shotgun as he did in offering his favorable impressions of Sean Connery, which he formed upon meeting the actor at a party in Palm Beach.

Jack Conway, Kentucky's Democratic Attorney General, has pulled within two points of Republican Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate race, according to the latest poll from SurveyUSA.

Paul leads Conway 49 percent to 47 percent in the new poll, a 13-point turnaround since the last SurveyUSA poll released at the beginning of the month. He leads by 5.8 percent in the RCP Average. The SurveyUSA poll, which was conducted for the Louisville Courier-Journal and WHAS 11, is the second poll in the last month to show the race within the margin of error. A CNN/Time poll taken September 2nd through 7th showed the candidates tied. However, Paul led by 15 points in a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted September 7th.

Paul, armed with Tea Party backing, easily won the Republican primary over establishment pick Trey Grayson. Still, in the general election he has come under scrutiny for taking issue with aspects of the Civil Rights Act and saying the drug problem in eastern Kentucky is "not a pressing issue." As a result, he has become a target of the national Democratic Party, which has attempted to tag Tea Party-backed candidates as extremists.

The gender divide on display in other races across the country is stark in Kentucky. While Paul earns the support of 59 percent of male voters, 55 percent of female voters support Conway. Paul has done a slightly better job of consolidating support among his Republican base. Eighty-three percent of Republicans support Paul while 72 percent of Democrats support Conway. The Democrat holds a 50-45 advantage among independent voters, however.

It's worth noting that the SurveyUSA sample for this poll is 51 percent Democrat and 36 percent Republican. The 2008 turnout in the state was 47 percent Democrat and 38 percent Republican.

Conducted among 611 likely voters from September 21st through 23rd, the poll has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.