Donald Trump

Lehigh Valley's Congressional Race Is Neck-and-Neck — and an Anomaly, New Poll Shows

The race to succeed retiring longtime U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent is very close in Pennsylvania's newly defined 7th congressional district.

What to Know

  • Voters in the new 7th congressional district voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a slim 48.7 to 47.6 percent margin in 2016.
  • Wild holds a two-point advantage (47-45) over Nothstein in what the poll's director, Patrick Murray, called the "historical midterm model."
  • Still, that's actually not overly positive news for Wild, according to Murray.

The intriguing race to represent the Lehigh Valley in Congress appears likely to go down to the wire after a new poll shows former Olympic cycling champion Marty Nothstein and one-time Allentown solicitor Susan Wild only points apart.

Wild, the Democrat, holds a slim advantage over the Republican, Nothstein, in a survey of likely voters by the Monmouth University Polling Institute in Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district.

She holds a two-point advantage (47-45) in what the poll's director, Patrick Murray, called the "historical midterm model."

Her lead grows to four points (48-44) when the poll applied what was described as a Democratic "surge" for Democratic precincts that could take place in the Nov. 6 election.

Still, that's actually not overly positive news for Wild, according to Murray.

He said the results made the 7th district the first of the 10 districts across the country that the Monmouth University Poll surveyed where the historical midterm model didn't show improved prospects for the Democrat.

"Monmouth has polled 10 competitive House races so far this cycle. This is the first one where the Republican candidate’s prospects improved by more than a point when we applied our standard likely voter model," Murray said.

Here's what the poll portends for the Lehigh Valley race, to both its two candidates and the people one of them will represent:

Best message over the final seven weeks wins: Likely voters said they are very interested in the upcoming election, but a majority of them still have "no opinion" of either candidate. Wild has a slightly higher favorability rating over Nothstein (30 to 26 percent), but both are unknown to nearly 60 percent of voters (59 percent for Nothstein to 57 percent for Wild).

Nothstein and Wild get more interesting: 55 percent of voters surveyed said they care "a lot" about the congressional elections, yet only 15 percent said they have been following their local race closely. National politics often receives a disproportionate amount of media coverage, but local government and elected officials is where the sausage is made. The candidates have to figure out how to get people curious about them.

The Trump effect likely confounds both campaigns: Support for President Trump is doing among voters in the district that leans slightly Democrat stands at 44 percent, compared to 47 percent who disapprove. That support number is significantly higher than the 29 percent who said they "strongly approve" of the job President Trump is doing as president. Such divergent data will likely leave both campaigns guessing at how to position themselves for or against White House policies.

As with much of the rest of Pennsylvania, some uncertainty in the outcome is due to the state recently redrawn congressional map, created and approved by the state Supreme Court. The former map was deemed unconstitutional.

Voters in the new 7th congressional district voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a slim 48.7 to 47.6 percent margin in 2016. Much of it was represented by retiring longtime U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican.

How Redistricting Reshaped Pennsylvania for Voters

Here's a graphic that illustrates how drastically different the state's 18 congressional districts are. Plug in your address to see in which district you will vote, and how many Democrats and Republicans participated in the the last two midterm primaries.

Source: Pennsylvania Secretary of State, AP
Credit: Sam Hart/NBC

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