Do pre-election “generic” House polls in 2006 match the initial exit poll returns?
Not really. A “generic” poll is one that asks respondents whether they would vote for (in Gallup’s words) “the Democratic Party’s candidate or the Republican Party’s candidate,” rather than naming specific candidates. (Typically the order is rotated: half of respondents are asked about Republicans first.) Generic polls are common because of the logistical complexity of (1) trying to match randomly dialed telephone numbers to congressional districts and (2) prompting the interviewers to pronounce the names of the candidates in each of the 435 districts — for an average of perhaps two or three interviews per district. Nevertheless, in real life, voters choose between named candidates, not generic ones, and this distinction makes a difference. Joseph Bafumi and colleagues state (PDF page 6): We know that they [the generic polls] perform poorly as point estimates. For instance, an 18-point Democrat lead from early in an election year most likely will translate into a far smaller vote lead
