Democrats grow more confident they can pick up House seats, including in Texas suburbs
Lucinda Guinn, the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, commissioned an internal poll last week in Texas’s 25th District, where President Trump won by 15 points four years ago. She got back results this weekend that showed Joe Biden leads there by 1 percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent. More importantly for her job, as the operative in charge of safeguarding her party’s House majority, Rep. Roger Williams (R) only led his challenger Julie Oliver by 2 points, 45 percent to 43 percent. Both findings are within the margin of error, but this is significant because that race is not on the DCCC’s public list of targets.
“We're constantly testing to figure out what the outer contours are of our battlefield right now,” Guinn said in an interview, 100 days out from the election. “We're seeing really, really promising numbers in places that we thought were maybe on the outer edges of our battlefield.”
With public polls showing Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, ahead nationally by double digits – and even leading Trump in red states such as Texas, Arizona and North Carolina – Democrats feel increasingly confident that they will be able to expand their majority in the House.
Republicans would need a net gain of 20 seats to win back the House. Earlier in the election cycle, GOP operatives argued that this was doable because Democrats must defend 31 House seats in districts that Trump carried in 2016. Indeed, several first-term Democratic members who won in ruby-red areas during the 2018 midterms face difficult contests, and a few are expected to lose. But the national environment has helped shore up Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hold on her gavel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/27/daily-202-democrats-grow-more-confident-they-can-pick-up-house-seats-including-texas-suburbs/
