Democrat Conor Lamb has narrowed the advantage held by Republican Rick Saccone in the special election for a congressional seat in Pennsylvania's 18th District, according to a new poll released over the weekend, the Orlando Political Observer reported.
Saccone, a state representative, holds a 45.5 percent to 40 percent lead over former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lamb in the Gravis Marketing survey, which is less than half the advantage he held in the previous poll by the company last month, when he had a 46.4 percent to 33.7 percent margin.
Gravis Marketing managing partner Doug Kaplan pointed out that it is surprising that Lamb has made the race as close as it is, because "Trump is still reasonably popular in the district, holding a 50.1 percent to 41.5 percent approval, [and] his tax reform law is also above water in this district by a 48.2 percent to 36.4 percent split."
A Monmouth University poll last week showed an even narrower three percentage point advantage for Saccone over Lamb at 49 percent to 46 percent.
The special election is scheduled to take place on March 13 to fill the seat vacated by resigning Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, a pro-life congressman who tried to get his mistress to have an abortion and had some ethical issues that could have triggered an investigation, the Weekly Standard reported.
The publication pointed out two possible main reasons to explain the closeness of the race. The first is that although Trump is still preferred in the district by almost nine percentage points, his popularity has decreased since he won the district by 20 points in 2016.
Another possible explanation is that Lamb appears to be running to the right of other Democrats on some key issues, with the latest example his reaction to last week's Florida school massacre when he sounded more like a Republican by stressing the need for mental health and declaring that "there's not one thing we can do with the stroke of a pen or one thing you can ban" to prevent gun violence.
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