A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg survey finds likely voters favor a Republican-led Congress over a Democratic one, 49% to 44%.

“The survey is yet more evidence that Democratic voters are tuning out the midterms. Democrats carried a 10-point lead among low-interest voters, who the party is trying to reach and motivate with vigorous turnout operations across the country. Republicans carried a 10-point lead in the new survey among voters who said they were highly interested in the election.”

“The confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted ‘crushing Democratic losses across the country’ if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls,” the New York Times reports.

Wrote pollster Cornell Belcher: “African-American surge voters came out in force in 2008 and 2012, but they are not well positioned to do so again in 2014. In fact, over half aren’t even sure when the midterm elections are taking place.”

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 21% of Republican voters back Mitt Romney for president.

“When Romney is excluded from the race, his supporters scatter, adding no clarity to the GOP free-for-all. In that scenario former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have 12 or 13 percent support from leaned Republicans who are registered to vote. All others have support in the single digits.”

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton holds a commanding lead with 64% support.

“The American political graveyard has more than a few monuments to politicians and public officials who embellished details of their military service, in some cases laying claim to medals for heroism or other military honors they never received,” the Boston Globe reports.

“And then, uniquely, there is Seth W. Moulton, the Democratic nominee for Congress in the Sixth Congressional District, a former Marine who saw fierce combat for months and months in Iraq. But Moulton chose not to publicly disclose that he was twice decorated for heroism until pressed by the Globe.”

“This is as close as we’ve gotten to a presidential-style campaign in those states. We’re assuming that the 2014 electorate is going to look more like 2012 than 2010.”

— GOP pollster Neil Newhouse, quoted by the New York Times, on the battleground states.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R) re-election campaign “found an African-American woman to stand next to the governor on his website photos,” the Philadelphia Daily News reports.

“Not an actual woman. According to Buzzfeed, the black woman who gazes at Corbett was Photoshopped from a stock picture.”

“Ed Gillespie, one of the Republican establishment’s most respected advisers and powerful fundraisers, badly trails in the race for campaign cash and has asked television stations to stop running his ads for Senate with just three weeks left before Election Day,” CBS News reports.

“Reports filed with the Federal Communications Commission show Gillespie’s campaign cancelling or drastically reducing the amount of money it plans to spend on television ads in coming days. At the same time, political operatives who track television advertising said Thursday that Gillespie does not have ads reserved in the final push toward the Nov. 4 elections.”

Hillary Clinton “is back on the campaign trail after a six-year hiatus, aiming to rouse Democratic voters who don’t typically show up for midterm elections. In the course of trying to help her party’s candidates, she is also testing themes that would likely surface in her own potential run for office and giving clues to the political profile she might adopt in a presidential campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Lately, Mrs. Clinton has spiced her campaign-trail speeches with targeted criticism of business–notable given that some liberals are suspicious of the Clinton family for accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate donations and speaking fees. Those concerns could prompt a primary challenge from the political left.”