New LA Times Poll Shows Democrats With Commanding Lead

There’s a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll out today. Their polling method prompted a lot of skepticism during the 2016 election, and in the end it turned out to be too favorable toward Donald Trump. Still, they employed a unique approach that showed promise if they fixed some of the methodological mistakes they made. That makes it worth paying attention to:

Democrats had a 14-point margin, 55% to 41%, when likely voters were asked which party’s candidate they would cast a ballot for if the election were held now. If that advantage holds up until election day, just less than six weeks away, it would almost surely be large enough to sweep a Democratic majority into the House.

A 14-point margin in the generic congressional poll is huge. And yet, thanks to Republican gerrymandering, the Times is careful to say only that it would “almost surely” be enough to lead to a Democratic victory. I sure hope they’re just being ultra-cautious out there in their new digs in El Segundo. And check this out:

Women, who already leaned significantly toward the Democrats, have shifted further in their direction, widening a large gender gap. The poll found women now favor the Democrats by 28 percentage points, 62% to 34%, among likely voters.

Twenty-eight points! And this poll was “largely completed” before Brett Kavanaugh hit the news. If Republicans keep up their “fuck the women, we’re confirming Brett” attitude for much longer, I figure they’ll be down to a crazification factor 27 percent among women who are likely to vote. Hell, maybe even some of the crazy ones will defect.

UPDATE: I originally called the LAT poll “pretty accurate” in the 2016 race, which isn’t really true. It did predict a Trump win, but only by projecting a 3-point victory in the popular vote, which was off by nearly six points. I’ve changed the first paragraph of the post to reflect this.