Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: The early fault lines for swing district representatives — Is the future of telephone polling in peril? — Inching closer to two special elections in North Carolina
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
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Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2019 09:02:06 -0600
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02/28/2019 10:00 AM EDT
        
By ZACH MONTELLARO ([email-masked]; @ZachMontellaro)

        
Editor's Note: This edition of Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Campaign subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.
          QUICK FIX         
- Two recent votes on gun control and President Donald Trump's emergency declaration illustrate the early decisions battleground House members are making in swing districts. 

- Pew Research Center announced that a historically low percentage of people were responding to telephone polls, further exacerbating a trend that could threaten political polling - especially on the state and district level.

- The North Carolina board of elections will meet next week to set a date for the NC-09 do-over election, and the man at the center of the election fraud investigation has been indicted. The date for the special election in NC-03 was also set.

Good Thursday morning. Email me at [email-masked] or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the great Campaign Pro team at [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked] and [email-masked]. Follow them on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @DanielStrauss4, @JamesArkin and @lbarronlopez.

Days until the 2019 election: 250

Days until the 2020 election: 614
          THE TOPLINES         
THE EARLY FAULT LINES - Two House votes this week give us an early look into fault lines that battleground representatives need to straddle. The House on Wednesday passed a bill that expands background checks for gun sales, largely along party lines. But eight Republicans joined Democrats to pass the bill, and two Democrats broke ranks and voted no.

Five of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill are on the the DCCC's early target list, including PA-01's Brian Fitzpatrick, TX-23's Will Hurd and FL-18's Brian Mast (New York GOP Rep. John Katko missed the vote due to his father's death). The two Democrats who voted against the resolution, ME-02's Jared Golden and MN-07's Collin Peterson, are similarly Republican targets. 

Similarly, some Republicans peeled off on a Tuesday vote that would block the president's emergency declaration on the border. Thirteen Republicans ultimately sided with Democrats to block the declaration. That number includes some usual suspects who break from the GOP conference on ideological groups, like Reps. Thomas Massie and Justin Amash. But it also includes swing district members - including Hurd, Fitzpatrick and WA-03's Jaime Herrera Beutler - and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has been trying to position herself as a leader shaping the future of the GOP. The two battleground Republicans who missed the vote, Rep. Ann Wagner and Katko, are split on how they would have voted:
 Katko wrote he would have supported the bill, and a spokesperson for Wagner told Score that if she could have made the vote, she would have voted against it. No Democrats broke ranks.

Join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues at the State Department on March 6-7, 2019, for the 9th annual International Women's Day Forum. As part of the day's programming, Anna Palmer co-author of POLITICO's Playbook, will lead a fireside chat with actress, singer, dancer and activist Keke Palmer, who has dedicated her life to philanthropy and activism for young girls. The full agenda and registration are available HERE.
          IN THE TRENCHES         
PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD - Puerto Rico is becoming a campaign hotspot for Democrats looking to distinguish themselves from Trump. "Adding to Puerto Rico's political value, Gov. Ricardo Rossell&oacute; is backing a plan to move the 2020 primary from early June to one of the final two weekends in March," POLITICO's Marc Caputo reported. "Rossell&oacute; and others want to know if candidates favor statehood, independence or commonwealth status."

- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has one big question mark with something early-state voters value. "A product of California campaigns where TV ads and name ID are king, one of the biggest unknowns about Harris is whether she can reliably nail the retail and performance pieces of presidential campaigning - while exhibiting sufficient nimbleness and depth to match the extraordinarily high expectations she's already being held to," POLITICO's Chris Cadelago reported.

POLLS POLLS POLLS - A new report from the Pew Research Center found more Americans unwilling to participate in telephone polls, long considering the gold standard for polling. The report found "that the response rate for its phone polls last year fell to just 6 percent," POLITICO's Steve Shepard reported. Pew also announced it is moving "the lion's share" of its polls of political and social trends to its online platform.

This doesn't mean that telephone polls are unreliable, Steve writes. "But all of that work is getting more difficult, potentially cost-prohibitive and could become increasingly prone to errors," making online polls increasingly in vogue. This, however presents a problem for political polling. While online panels may be big enough to find a representative sample, many cannot handle states (especially small ones), and there's been virtually no polls of individual congressional districts.

NC-09, FOREVER - The political operative at the center of election fraud in NC-09 was indicted Wednesday. McCrae "Dowless faces three felony charges of obstruction of justice, two charges of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and two charges of possession of absentee ballot," The Charlotte Observer's Ely Portillo and Jim Morrill reported. "The indictment from Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Dowless's actions 'served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public's confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.'"

- The state board of elections will meet next Monday to set a calendar date for a new election in NC-09.

POLITICO PLAYBOOK: Wake Up. Read Playbook. Eat Lunch. Read Playbook PM. Repeat. Be in the Know. Sign up today here.

THE SENATE MAP - Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has wanted the majority since 2016. But how big the map will be in 2020 depends on his recruitment efforts. "Whether Schumer will be able to expand the Senate map beyond competitive races in Arizona, North Carolina, Maine, Iowa and Colorado will depend on whether his pitch resonates and whether some of the Democrats' presidential hopefuls realize a Senate seat is more attainable," POLITICO's Burgess Everett and James Arkin reported after interviewing Schumer. "[With] recent history in mind, Schumer doesn't want to appear too bullish - already eyeing 2022 even as he firms up his candidates in 2020."

- One person Schumer couldn't recruit? Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke. The Dallas Morning News' Gromer Jeffers Jr. reported that O'Rourke will not challenge Sen. John Cornyn - and it sounds like he's running for president instead. "Amy and I have made a decision about how we can best serve our country," he said in a statement. "We are excited to share it with everyone soon."

- A new super PAC, Midwest Victory PAC, is targeting Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) with a new ad backed by a small buy, James reported.

HOUSE BATTLEGROUND - Democrats picked up two House seats in Texas in 2018, but another half-dozen districts almost flipped from red to blue. Now, the once-dominant state GOP is working to shore up support in 2020. "They are bracing for a rapidly changing voter base, anti-Trump fervor and a more motivated Democratic Party by investing in more direct connection with voters before next year's presidential election," POLITICO's Renuka Rayasam reported. "The state party also plans to raise $5 million this year - double the amount it raised in 2018 - with about half of that money earmarked for television advertising."

SPECIAL ELECTION WATCH - North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced the dates for the special election in NC-03, to fill the seat of the late Republican Rep. Walter Jones. A primary will be held on April 30 and the special general election will be on July 9 if there's no primary runoff (candidates need 40 percent plus one vote to avoid a runoff in the state). If there is a primary runoff, it would be on July 9 and the special election would be on Sept. 10. The seat is a red district and is expected to remain in Republican hands.

- One potential Democrat who could try to break the GOP's hold: Retired Marine Col. Richard Bew. Sources familiar with the race says he is "seriously considering" a run. His roots in the district go back to when he was based in Cherry Point.

THE VOTER ROLLS - A federal judge has temporarily halted Texas' officials attempts to review the citizenship of a list of tens of thousands of voters. U.S. District Judge Fred "Biery ordered that while the litigation continues, counties can 'continue to find out if in fact someone is registered who is not a citizen' ... but may not communicate directly with any particular individual on the list, The Texas Tribune's Emma Platoff reported. 

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Look, Nita. We're concertgoers. You may smell things you don't recognize, but we are concertgoers. If you go, you have to stay." - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, recalling a conversation she had with Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) before going to a Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan concert, in a Rolling Stone interview.
    
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