The Congressional polls, they keep coming.
Julie Oliver
Progressive Democratic candidate Julie Oliver is in a close race with her GOP incumbent opponent Rep. Roger Williams, a new internal poll finds.
The poll of 400 likely voters by EMC Research shows Oliver only two percentage points behind Williams, 45 to 43, with a 5-point margin of error.
The same poll shows Williams has higher name ID recognition compared to Oliver (53 to 42 percent) but the incumbent lawmaker suffers from favorable-unfavorable ratings that are almost equal (23-20).
[…]
Monday’s poll is the second survey this cycle showing the competitiveness of Texas’ 25th congressional district, held by Republicans since 2013.
A DCCC in-house poll in July showed the same margin between William and Oliver, 45 to 43.
See here for more on that previous poll, and here for the polling memo. The main difference between these two polls is that Biden led Trump 47-46 in the July poll, and Trump leads Biden 49-45 in this one. The latter seems like a more realistic result – as noted, Trump won this district 55-40 in 2016, and Beto got 47% in 2018. He lost by five to Ted Cruz, so I can buy Trump beating Biden by four here. That would also bode pretty well for Biden’s statewide ambitions, even if it means Julie Oliver will likely lose, albeit by a smaller margin this time. But she’s running a strong race, she’s got the DCCC on her side, and she’ll almost certainly do better with the resources to make her case to the voters than without them.
I should note that Roger Williams’ campaign released a poll of its own last week, which showed the incumbent leading 52-40. That was a rare Republican poll release for this cycle, and it’s a pretty decent result for Rep. Williams. My guess is that this understates Oliver’s level of support – we have no details about this poll, so we really are just guessing – but it’s not completely out of the question. Hugely disappointing if accurate, but not impossible. That poll, which of course came via Patrick Svitek on Twitter, did not include a Biden/Trump matchup, or at least the public information released about that poll did not include such a question. Make of it what you will.
IIRC from 538, released internal polls have an average bias of 6 points in favor of the candidate, so the 10-point spread on these internal polls sounds about right. That said, the top lines from TX-21 and TX-25 are about 2 points apart in general, and TX-21 is probably tied, so this 2-point Williams lead is believable. If you forced me to pick a number though, I would go with Williams is ahead by 5.
CD TX 25th is a hotbed of gun-toting Texas hillbillies. I find it unlikely Oliver has a chance, regardless of any anti-Trump/GOP sentiment sweeping the nation.
But a boy can dream…