It’s a dead heat before the race has even begun to represent the 1st Congressional District in Washington, D.C., in next year’s midterm elections.
A recently released independent poll concluded Republican Brian Fitzpatrick and Democratic challenger Bob Harvie are currently tied 41-41% to take Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District seat. Remaining voters polled – or roughly 19% – were undecided in this hypothetical two-way race.
“New polling shows what we already know — Brian Fitzpatrick is failing to stand up to the chaos we are seeing out of Washington, and Bucks and Montgomery voters are ready for change. People are sick of D.C. dysfunction and politicians like Fitzpatrick who leave us behind,” said Dan McCormick, Bob Harvie’s campaign manager.
Harvie is currently president of Bucks County Commissioners.
The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) between Oct. 10 and 11. The results may be found here. About 585 “likely” 2026 voters were sampled.
Independent voters were “breaking at a 2-1 rate in our direction,” McCormick noted.
According to the poll, “Trump fatigue” was setting in for PA-01 voters and “the unpopularity of Trump and the national GOP brand [was] splashing onto Fitzpatrick.”
“I’m encouraged, and it validates what we’re hearing from moderate Republicans and Independents who are sick of Fitzpatrick’s ads,” McCormick said.
The poll indicated a majority, or about 57% of voters, said Fitzpatrick should do more to stand up to Trump.
McCormick said while a “huge swath of Democrats” said yes, roughly 25% of Republicans also want Fitzpatrick to stand up more to Trump.
“The biggest through-point is [Fitzpatrick’s] approval/disapproval rating. In other cycles he might be plus 2 or 5%. Right now, 32% approve of Fitzpatrick’s [job] while 47% disapprove of the job [he is doing.] That means his approval rating is 15 points underwater,” McCormick explained.
Voters also blame Trump and Congressional Republicans (48%) more than Democrats (42%) for the ongoing federal government shutdown, according to McCormick.
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A recent report by Politico said Americans “spread the blame” nearly equally among both parties for not doing more to come together and address the ongoing federal government shutdown.
McCormick is optimistic Harvie could be the one to successfully unseat Fitzpatrick even while Democrats have challenged the Republican congressman in previous years.
Harvie has greater county-wide name recognition than other Democratic candidates in the past, and he has a strong public service record, McCormick said.
“Bob has a record people can point to – even if they don’t agree with everything. We oversampled Republicans by over 2 points – there is a slight Republican voter edge in the First Congressional District … and if that means we have to oversample Republicans to get the reality, that is helpful,” McCormick explained. “We wanted to get as true a look as possible.”
The First Congressional District includes all of Bucks County and a sliver of eastern Montgomery County.
