New NJ-7 poll shows Bennett at 47, Kean at 42

A StimSight Research survey for InsiderNJ, fielded September 8-12 among 498 likely voters, put Democrat Rebecca Bennett at 47 percent and Republican incumbent Thomas Kean Jr. at 42 percent in New Jersey's 7th District, with 1 percent for other candidates. The poll does not report a margin of error, and a five-point separation on a sample that size is close enough that the race reads as competitive rather than settled.

The number confirmed rather than changed our picture of the district. Our model now gives Bennett a 68 in 100 chance of winning NJ-7, up from 67 percent in our previous run earlier on September 14. The mean margin moved from D+4.0 to D+4.3. Our 5th-to-95th-percentile range shifted by a few tenths, from R+11.4 to D+19.2 before the poll to R+11.0 to D+19.6 after it. That range is the more useful figure here: a district forecast this wide is consistent with a comfortable Democratic win and with a Republican win by high single digits.

The national backdrop in our numbers as of September 14 is a generic-ballot average of D+6.8 across 22 polls in a 45-day window. Our model gives Democrats a 95 percent chance of reaching the 218 seats needed for House control, with a mean of 241 Democratic seats. One caveat on that figure is ours to own: our simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and within each district, but we have no cluster data to correlate demographically similar districts across state lines, so the House control probability is marginally firmer than a fuller error model would leave it.

The Senate is where our forecast is genuinely unresolved: a 50 in 100 chance of Democratic control against 49 percent for Republicans, on a mean of 50.3 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats; Republicans need 50, because a 50-50 tie goes to them on the vice president's vote.