Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College<\/a>, within the poll\u2019s margin of error.<\/p>\nResearchers, who also surveyed voters in Pennsylvania\u2019s battleground 10th District in Dauphin County, tied Democratic candidates\u2019 edge to Trump\u2019s missteps.<\/p>\n
In the 7th District, which encompasses Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties plus parts of Monroe County, 73% of voters polled gave Trump a fair\/poor job approval rating and 62% said Trump\u2019s policies have hurt them.<\/p>\n
This matters for down-ballot candidates, pollsters said. About 43% of Republicans in the 7th District report they are \u201cworse off\u201d financially than they were a year ago.<\/p>\n
Brooks\u2019 campaign said the poll reflected how residents are feeling in this tight economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBob has worked every day of his life, from bartending and delivering pizzas to 20 years fighting fires in Bethlehem, and he\u2019ll work just as hard in Congress to bring down costs for working families in the Lehigh Valley,\u201d said campaign spokesman Benny Stanislawski.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know this race will be tight, and Trump will spend millions to save his lapdog, Ryan Mackenzie. But people are ready for a change, and we\u2019re going to run through the tape and fight for every single vote,\u201d Stanislawski added.<\/p>\n
Mackenzie\u2019s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the poll.<\/p>\n
In the 10th District, Democrat Janelle Stelson leads Republican Rep. Scott Perry 47% to 44%.<\/p>\n
The two districts are among the handful nationwide considered truly up for grabs, and thus likely to determine which party controls the U.S. House next term.<\/p>\n
The majority of those polled \u2014 39% \u2014 listed the economy as their top concern, ahead of government\/politicians (14%), data centers (5%) and immigration (2%).<\/p>\n
The Republican congressional candidates in the two districts were only winning about 7 in 10 Republican voters who reported being \u201cworse off,\u201d while they won almost every Republican who said they are \u201cbetter off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Democrats led among independent and moderate voters.<\/p>\n
About 48% of voters in the poll reported themselves as \u201clikely\u201d voters. Brooks\u2019 lead grew among those reporting themselves as likely, according to the poll, but it didn\u2019t say by how much \u201cbecause of the small sample size of the likely voter pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, among 7th District voters who reported being \u201cvery interested\u201d in the upcoming election, Democrats had an eight-point edge, according to researchers.<\/p>\n
Still, 16% of voters in the 7th District considered themselves undecided.<\/p>\n
In statewide races, the Lehigh Valley was split on its opinion of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, with 43% giving him a rating of excellent\/good, and 44% fair\/poor.<\/p>\n
Only 38% of respondents said the state was headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n
Despite that, Shapiro had a 23-point lead over his Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, 53%-30%, among 7th District voters.<\/p>\n
For the survey, pollsters interviewed 147 Democrats, 136 Republicans, and 74 independents in the 7th District from Sept. 9-20. That poll\u2019s margin of error is plus or minus 5.8 percentage points.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania voters are overwhelmingly pessimistic about President Donald Trump\u2019s performance, and that pessimism is creating problems for Republican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2376,836,433,182,139,434,28,30,29,50],"class_list":["post-293001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-breaking-news","tag-election","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}