The rightward turn of a South Texas border congressional seat has surprisingly put a historically Democratic seat into a possible pickup opportunity for Republicans according to internal polling numbers.
This pickup opportunity came when Filemon Vela Jr. resigned his seat in March necessitating a special election. The 34th Congressional District, which includes the border town of Brownville and Corpus Christi along with rural areas just inland from the gulf coast, has seen a surge in illegal immigration as Biden did little to secure the border.
The Republican poll, conducted April 19-21 by Ragnar Research shows Republican Mayra Flores Flores leading Democrat Dan Sanchez by 5 points in a late April survey, while President Joe Biden’s job approval was underwater by 14 points in a district he carried in 2020.
The two numbers that are most troubling for Democrats are that Republicans currently hold a three-point lead on the generic congressional ballot with immigration as the top concern of voters at 34%.
Fela has easily won the district five times since it was created in 2012, but it has taken a hard right turn at the Presidential level. The district gave Barack Obama a 23-point win over John McCain in 2012, but Donald Trump only lost it to Joe Biden by four points in 2020.
This shows the continuation of the 2020 election when he saw Texas Hispanics along the border go from being strongly Democrat to making a big shift to the right, turning it into the latest swing area in the state. Now we could see a heavily Hispanic District flip and narrow even further Nancy Pelosi’s small Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is also targeting two more South Texas seats in the fall that narrowly voted for Biden, according to Politico. A Republican win by Flores could scare the Democrats and give hope to Republicans to win more heavily Hispanic districts.
Do you think more Hispanics will vote Republican because Biden refuses to make our border secure?
