New Michigan 7th poll shows a close race, and our forecast does not move

One new poll has landed in Michigan's 7th District. A Global Strategy Group survey of 500 likely voters, fielded August 11-13, put the Democrat at 49 percent and the Republican at 47 percent. A two-point gap on a sample that size is close, and the poll does not establish who is ahead.

Our forecast reads the result as confirmation rather than news. The model gives the Democrat a 71 in 100 chance in MI-7, unchanged from our previous run at 12:30 PM ET today. The mean margin moved from D+5.4 to D+5.7. The 5th-to-95th percentile range is now R+11.2 to D+22.6, against R+11.3 to D+22.0 before. Those are rounding-scale shifts, not a new picture of the district.

The gap between the poll and our margin is worth noting without over-reading. Our estimate sits several points to the Democratic side of the Global Strategy Group numbers, because the model also weighs national conditions and district fundamentals alongside individual surveys. Our generic ballot average stands at D+6.7 across 25 polls over the last 45 days.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 94 percent chance of winning House control, with a mean of 242.7 seats against the 218 needed. One caveat belongs with that figure. Our simulation draws correlated error at four levels — national, census division, state and individual district — but it has no term linking demographically similar districts in different places, because we lack the cluster data to build one. That omission makes our House control number marginally firmer than a fuller treatment would leave it. The size of the difference is not measured in this run, so we do not put a number on it.

Seventy-five days remain before the November 3 election. In MI-7, nothing in this poll changes what we already had.