NRCC-sponsored poll puts Fitzpatrick up nine in PA-1; our forecast is unchanged

A Public Opinion Strategies survey of 400 registered voters in Pennsylvania's 1st District, fielded September 11-14 and sponsored by the NRCC, has Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick at 51 percent and Democrat Bob Harvie at 42 percent. The poll was released on x.com. It is the only new number in this race.

Our forecast did not move. The model gives Harvie a 37 in 100 chance and Fitzpatrick a 63 percent chance, with a mean margin of R+3.0 — the same figures as our previous run, at 10:32 AM ET on September 17. The 5th-to-95th percentile range shifted by a tenth of a point, from R+18.1 to D+12.1 to R+18.2 to D+12.1. That range is the more useful description of where our uncertainty sits 47 days out: outcomes from a comfortable Republican win to a mid-single-digit Democratic one are all inside it.

The poll is on the Republican side of our average rather than the center of it, and it carries a party committee's sponsorship. Our model discounts partisan-sponsored surveys, and a 400-person sample of registered voters carries more sampling error than a larger one. Together those are enough to leave the district's estimate where it was rather than pull it nine points toward Fitzpatrick.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 96 percent chance of winning a House majority, with a mean of 242.3 seats against the 218 needed, on a generic-ballot average of D+7.2 across 27 polls in the last 45 days. One caveat is ours to own: our simulation correlates district error nationally, by census division, by state and individually, but has no term linking demographically similar districts in different places. Without that, the 96 percent reads marginally firmer than it should. PA-1 is one of the districts our model does not count on.