With the nation continuing to struggle under the weight of the Trump administration, there is, unsurprisingly, a lot of attention being paid to ways to subvert his agenda via victories for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.
Before that point, however, there is a special election to fill a Congressional seat in Pennsylvania next week, and in a new poll conducted and released by Emerson College, the Democratic candidate is leading, although his lead is technically surmountable.
The election is being held to fill the seat of Representative Tim Murphy, who resigned after it was revealed that the publicly anti-abortion Republican had encouraged a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair to have an abortion.
Murphy is one of multiple high profile recent Congressional resignations, including those of Al Franken and John Conyers, both of whom were accused of sexual harassment.
Running to replace Murphy are candidates including Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone. In the new poll released by Emerson College, Lamb leads Saccone, with an estimated 48 percent of the vote to Saccone’s estimated 45 percent.
Caveats to that lead include the fact that 7 percent of likely voters polled by Emerson College remained undecided and the fact that the poll’s margin of error is 4.8 percent.
Points on Lamb’s side include his relative popularity in the district and the enthusiasm of those saying that they plan on supporting him in the election. In the face of 15 percent of voters saying they had heard of him but had no opinion, Lamb garnered a 48 percent approval rating. Saccone had a 44 percent approval rating among those polled.
Concurrently, 63 percent of Lamb supporters said that they were “very excited to vote,” while only 53 percent of Saccone voters said the same.
The results of this poll are striking, considering the fact that in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won Murphy’s old Congressional district by nearly 20 percent. Apparently, Saccone can not count on riding that margin of victory to his own victory.
Trump himself will apparently visit the district next week for a campaign rally, although that’s hardly a sure sign that Saccone’s support among voters will be boosted so as to put him over the top.
Two of the most recent high profile candidates behind whom the president cast his support include Republican candidate for Virginia governor Ed Gillespie and Republican candidate to be U.S. Senator from Alabama Roy Moore. Both men lost.
The outcome of the Pennsylvania special election will no doubt prove to be a trendsetter that stays in many people’s minds ahead of the midterm elections later this year, elections in which Democrats hope to pick up enough seats to become the majority party in at least one, if not both houses of Congress.
In the state of Pennsylvania, Democrats will have the odds evened out ahead of the midterms, since a redistricting that is less in Republicans’ overt favor is set to soon go into effect.
Overall, Democrats hold a lead in generic Congressional ballot polling of just over 9 percent, setting them up for a seeming round of victories later this year.
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