Traditionally, people have wanted to throw out the bums in Congress, but just not their own. Their own representatives were the good guys, it was everyone else who was a bum.

Not this year.

People want Democrats to control Congress after this fall's elections, a shift from April, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Saturday. But the margin is thin and there's a flashing yellow light for incumbents of both parties: Only about one-third want their own lawmakers re-elected. The tenuous 45 percent to 40 percent preference for a Democratic Congress reverses the finding a month ago on the same question: 44 percent for Republicans and 41 percent for Democrats. The new readout came as the economy continued showing signs of improvement and the tumultuous battle over the health care law that President Barack Obama finally signed in March faded into the background.

So good news, bad news. Good news, Dems are improving their numbers. Bad news, 59-60 percent of incumbents (in both chambers) are Democrats.

Still, the trends are definitely trending back our way:

The only pollsters currently showing the GOP with the generic congressional ballot are Rasmussen (of course) and Fox. But the generic ballot is only half the question. The other is voter intensity, and on that front, we're still lagging. The good news is that the gap is closing.

Republican registered voters' enthusiasm about voting in this year's midterm elections has declined significantly in recent weeks. As a result, Republicans' advantage over Democrats on this measure has shrunk from 19 points in early April to 10 points in the latest weekly aggregate.

We saw the same thing in our own weekly Research 2000 poll:

After spending a couple of weeks spreading back apart, the "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans narrowed noticeably this week. Last week, that gap was ten points (with 75% of Republicans indicating certainty or likelihood of voting, versus 65% of Democrats). This week, that gap was whittled down to seven points. Democrats basically held steady (64%), but the GOP gave back some of their recent gains in intensity, with 71% of Republicans indicating their strong propensity for voting.

In both cases, note that Democratic intensity hasn't increased, but Republican one has decreased. That's not a safe place to be, but regardless, the less motivated they are and remain, the better off we'll be come November.

There's nothing we can do about dominating the ranks of incumbents. We just gotta work toward making sure Republicans feel the brunt of that sentiment as harshly as Democrats do.