No Need to Panic. Yet.

There’s been a lot of consternation over a recent Monmouth poll showing Trump being much more popular and the gap on the generic congressional ballot narrowing to only two points. How should we react to this individual poll? Well…

That’s not say there’s no basis for some concern — the gap in polling averages on the generic ballot has also been narrowing. On the other hand:

More and more Republicans are looking at how the 2018 elections are shaping up — and deciding they want no part of them.

This week, two high-profile House committee heads — Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who chairs the Oversight Committee — announced they’re retiring rather than running for reelection.

This makes 21 House Republicans and three GOP senators who are calling it quits, not counting several more who are stepping down to run for another political office (or who have already resigned).

Viewed in historical context, that number of Republican retirements is clearly on the high side. And reports have suggested that this is just the start, and that several more GOP House members — perhaps many more — will also soon announce they’ll head for the exits.

Revealingly, only eight House Democrats and zero Democratic senators have so far made the same choice. (Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota resigned due to scandal, but his seat has already been filled by Tina Smith, who will run this fall.) That’s a dramatic discrepancy.

Though the explanations offered for these decisions differ, and though many of these GOP-held seats are in no real danger of flipping to Democrats, these retirements are revealing how members of Congress currently view the national political environment. That is: they think there’s a real possibility of a Democratic wave.

But the trend is more meaningful even than that. These very retirements could help make such a wave even bigger, because it’s generally easier for the opposition party to flip open seats than it is to knock off incumbents.

As Prokop says, the perception that a Democratic wave is coming becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Control of the House and Senate aren’t decided on the generic ballot but in marginal races, and if Republican incumbents in such districts are more reluctant to defend their seats and Democrats recruit better candidates, the edge in the generic ballot they need to flip either house becomes less. Special election results are also more relevant than the generic ballot, and again here the news has been good.

Both houses of Congress overrepresent Republican interests and constituencies, so it’s never going to be easy to regain control of either, but things are still looking pretty good for 2018.