Latest news today out of Pennsylvania courtesy of Gravis Marketing polling:
On Tuesday, March 13th, voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District will go to the polls in what has become the highest profile special election since Doug Jones beat Roy Moore in December. Gravis Marketing has released their third and final poll in this race. The Likely voter poll, conducted March 1st-5th, shows the race continuing to tighten into a toss-up. The poll uses the same demographic model as the previous two Gravis Marketing polls of the race.
The State Representative Rick Saccone now leads former assistant U.S. Attorney Connor Lamb 45%-42%. The previous poll in February had Saccone up 45%-40%, and the first poll in January showed Saccone up 46%-34%. The race has undeniably tightened as Saccone’s support has been frozen in the 45%-46% range while Lamb’s support has climbed from 34% to 42%. While Saccone remains the favorite to win this race, there is a clear path to victory for Lamb. 13% of likely voters remain undecided.
Saccone is currently pulling 4% of Clinton voters while Lamb is taking 13.1% of Trump voters. Saccone, however, takes 16% of Democrat compared to Lamb’s 12.3% of Republicans. Lamb holds a 46%-27% lead over independent voters.
Donald Trump’s approval rating has taken a slight hit in the district over the three polls showing only a slight trend downward from 54%-39% in January to 49%-42% in the first week of March. Governor Wolf has remained stable and currently sits at 33%-47% in the district. Senator Casey’s numbers have also remained static and are currently at 33%-38%.
Republicans may be blowing away a lot of money on a race that may not have been worth fighting for in the first place:
In a show of last-minute panic, Republicans are throwing money at a Pennsylvania House special election in a district President Donald Trump won by 19 points.
The official campaign arm for House Republicans reported spending another $619,664 on media ahead of the March 13 election for Pennsylvania’s 18th District House seat, bringing the total to $3.5 million on media buys, according to Politico’s Jake Sherman.
In an added twist, the district won’t even exist in its current form by the November midterms because a ruling from the state Supreme Court requires that the boundaries be redrawn.
Republican Rick Saccone, a Trumpian Republican candidate, is vying to take former Republican lawmaker Tim Murphy’s seat, after Murphy resigned amid reports that he asked a woman he was having an affair with to get an abortion.
The district, which currently covers the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, should have been an easy race for Republicans. It’s rated as an R+11 district, a heavy Republican tilt that’s in part due to the state’s partisan gerrymandering that the state Supreme Court recently ruled unconstitutional.
But Republicans have been getting nervous that they might lose the seat to Saccone’s Democratic opponent Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine and former assistant US attorney who has been winning the support of the district’s building trade and energy unions — voters who used to align with Murphy — and polling within single digits of Saccone.
Republican-aligned groups have greatly outspent Democrats in the race. According to the Washington Post, as of February 27, Saccone-allied groups had spent a total of $9.1 million on the race, between the Congressional Leadership Fund, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and others. Meanwhile, Democratic groups and labor unions had spent less than $1 million.
But Lamb isn’t taking anything for granted and is having a big name close out this race:
Former Vice President Joe Biden paid Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb the ultimate compliment Tuesday: “He reminds me of my son Beau,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the Delaware attorney general who died of cancer in 2015.
“He reminds me of my Beau because with Beau and with Conor, it’s about the other guy,” Mr. Biden said in remarks in a crowded Collier union hall Tuesday afternoon and again in an evening appearance before several hundred people in a ballroom at Robert Morris University in Moon.
Mr. Lamb, 33, is running in a special election Tuesday against Republican Rick Saccone to represent the 18th Congressional District seat vacated by Tim Murphy. Like the late Beau Biden, Mr. Lamb is a former military lawyer with a family legacy in politics: His grandfather was a Democratic leader in the state Legislature. Or as Mr. Biden put it, “Public service is in his blood. It’s all he’s done; think about it.”
Much of Mr. Biden’s two stump speeches were the same, but the audiences were different. In his afternoon appearance at the Carpenters Training Center, Mr. Biden spoke to a group that was mostly male and skewed older. In RMU’s Yorktown Hall, the capacity crowd was made up of more women and young people.
The message, however, was consistent.
“This is a son of southwestern Pennsylvania,” said the former vice president and longtime senator from Delaware. “He believes in hard work, he believes in labor. He’s not afraid to say the word ‘union.’”
Mr. Lamb “will never ever stop, will never ever play a game,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s this guy. This guy gets it.”
Let’s seal the deal and win this damn race! Click here to donate and get involved with Lamb’s campaign.