Washington (CNN) Half of registered voters want a Democratic-controlled Congress, according to a new poll, signaling a competitive 2018 midterm election season in which Democrats will aim to gain back control of both chambers of Congress. Fifty percent of registered voters say they would prefer Democrats control Congress, while 39 want Republicans in charge, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday. The poll also finds that 59% of Democratic voters say they have a high level of interest in the 2018 midterms, compared with 49% of Republican voters. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was conducted December 13-15 and consisted of 900 adults, nearly half of whom were reached by cell phone. The poll has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, and a margin of error among the 736 registered voters of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Source: CNN December 17, 2017 18:33 UTC