Republican incumbents in four key U.S. House races are in a tight bid for reelection, according to a series of polls from USC, CSULB and Cal Poly Pomona. Experts will discuss the results in a webinar moderated by KQED's Marisa Lagos on Sept. 25.
With two months to go before Election Day, four of California's key races for the U.S. House of Representatives hang in the balance, including U.S. Rep. Katie Porter's seat, according to new poll results by USC, California State University, Long Beach, and Cal Poly Pomona.
U.S. Rep. Scott Baugh leads Democratic challenger Dave Min by 3.7 points in the race - within the poll's margin of error of 4.3 percentage points - to fill Porter's seat for the 47th Congressional District spanning Orange County.
But the poll also shows that a handful of California Republican incumbents in the mostly blue state are in a fight to retain their congressional seats, including:
- Rep. Ken Calvert, who is in a dead heat with Democrat Will Rollins for the 41st Congressional District that includes Riverside County.
- Rep. Michelle Steel trails challenger Democrat Derek Tran by 1.5 percentage points for the 45th Congressional District seat.
- Rep. Mike Garcia is nearly neck-and-neck with Democrat George Whitesides for Congressional District 27 spanning the Antelope Valley in Los Angeles County.
"A strong turnout for Democrats at the top of the ticket could knock out several of the Republican incumbents," says Christian Grose, professor of political science and international relations and public policy at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Price School of Public Policy. "California Democratic House candidates have the wind at their back, but the real question is whether Democratic voter excitement will knock up against a red wall of California Republican incumbents. As goes California's congressional districts, so goes control of the U.S. Congress."
Those are just some of the results of the latest California Elections and Policy Polls sponsored by the Long Beach Center for Urban Politics and Policy at Cal State Long Beach in collaboration with USC.
The series of eight polls of more than 3,700 total likely voters was conducted from Sept. 14-21 across eight California districts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Central Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Orange County and Riverside County.
