The outlook for House Republicans keeps getting worse
Here’s how grim things look for House Republicans three weeks out from the election: They’re struggling to win back seats even in conservative bastions like Oklahoma and South Carolina, where Democrats staged shocking upsets in 2018.
About a half-dozen seats fall in that category — the lowest of low-hanging fruit for Republicans. But most private and public surveys from both parties show either dead heats or the Democratic incumbent with a modest lead, a startling position for a crop of candidates running in Trump country. The seats were won in 2018 by Reps. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.), Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), Max Rose (D-N.Y.), Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), Ben McAdams (D-Utah) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.).
Their success stems from Democrats’ massive fundraising advantage as well as some Republican recruitment struggles. And in a few places, Trump has become so toxic that he’s dragging down GOP candidates where he was once overwhelmingly popular.
“They continue to run rubber stamps for the president,” Cunningham said in a recent interview outside the Capitol. “Even though the district is more conservative, it doesn’t want a rubber stamp for the president.”
Privately, Republicans concede their chances of reclaiming Cunningham's coastal South Carolina district are dimming. He's leading Republican Nancy Mace by a staggering 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, according to an early October poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the independent-expenditure arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and shared with POLITICO. And he has even managed to outflank Mace on the right, warning she will raise taxes 23 percent on prescription drugs and groceries.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/13/house-republicans-2020-outlook-429130
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