The Party's Own Pollster, Lake, Reports the Ballot Seven Points Underwater; the Party Reports the Pollster

WASHINGTON — Lake, the party establishment's pollster of longest standing, has circulated a survey showing the party trailing the generic congressional ballot by seven points — a forecast the party's committees have moved swiftly to address by disputing.

The number arrives not from a hostile network or a rival campaign but from the family accountant, which is what makes it, in the words of one strategist who requested anonymity to sound this tired, 'the bad kind of poll: the kind we paid for.'

The Press notes the standing epistemology of Washington polling, in force across administrations of both flavors: a survey is methodologically rigorous when it flatters your side, an outlier when it is ambiguous, and push-polling by the fake-news machine when it is your own pollster handing you a seven. The methodology in all three cases is identical; the reader is not.

Party officials responded that the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day, a proverb deployed exclusively by parties losing the other ones.

Rank-and-file candidates in difficult districts absorbed the number quietly and began, sources report, scheduling town halls at unusual distances from the national brand — a migratory behavior pollsters of both parties recognize as the surest confirmation the seven is real.

The pollster, veterans note, has delivered unwelcome numbers to this party for decades and been proven right at intervals precisely spaced to be forgotten. The crystal ball, reached for comment, forecast continued storms and an invoice.