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GOP Polling Shows Trouble for Several House Democrats

New polling conducted for American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank, suggests that some East Coast races are more competitive than previously thought, even in districts where the Republican candidate has very little name recognition.

In Pennsylvania’s 10th district, for example, former U.S. Attorney Tom Marino (R) leads Rep. Christopher Carney (D) 52 percent to 37 percent. That’s even as 41 percent of the likely voters surveyed admitted having never heard of Marino.

In that state’s 3rd district, Republican challenger Mike Kelly has 62 percent name recognition and leads Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D) 52 percent to 38 percent.

Republicans also hold slight leads over Democratic incumbents in Pennsylvania’s 11th and 12th districts, in addition to Virginia’s 5th.

The full list of districts is available here.

The polling was conducted for American Action Forum from July 28 to Aug. 1 by Ayres McHenry & Associates Inc. The GOP firm polled 400 likely voters in each of the districts, finding several themes:

• Voters say the country is on the wrong track by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio.

• While each of the 12 districts polled have Democratic incumbents, voters there preferred a Republican to a Democrat on the generic ballot test by 38 percent to 31 percent.

• President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have favorability ratings of just 43 percent and 27 percent, respectively, in the surveyed districts.

• Respondents oppose the new health care overhaul by 51 percent to 39 percent, including 40 percent who strongly oppose it.

The National Republican Congressional Committee circulated the poll results, first reported by the National Review, in a memo Tuesday morning.

“Kudos to American Action Forum for helping us get a sense of how things stand for the GOP at this moment: facing opportunities for enormous gains, but with a lot of work still ahead of them,” said NRCC Communications Director Ken Spain.

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