Kavanaugh, Kelly and health care: recently released political data offers a hyper-local glimpse of opinions in Butler County.

With Election Day approaching, political polling in Butler County is on the rise, in particular as pollsters attempt to gauge voters’ opinions in the race between incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, and Democratic challenger Ron DiNicola.

Polls generally maintain Kelly as the favorite over DiNicola for Pennsylvania’s new 16th Congressional District, which includes voters in Butler, Lawrence, Mercer, Crawford and Erie counties, but the extent of Kelly’s lead varies depending on the pollster.

The most recently released poll for the district puts Kelly just three percentage points above DiNicola. The poll was released Tuesday by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a group whose goal is to get Democrats elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

That result looks rather bullish for Democrats compared to another poll of the race conducted about two weeks ago by Siena College and The New York Times. That poll shows an eight-point lead for Kelly.

The Butler Eagle reached out to Butler County’s Democratic and Republican organizations to give hometown comments on the 16th District’s polling results. Perhaps predictably, they view the polls through opposing lenses.

Catherine Lalonde, chairman for the Butler County Democrats, likes DiNicola’s chances.

“I think he has a good chance,” Lalonde said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

County GOP leaders referred questions about polls to Mike Barley, a campaign consultant working for the Kelly campaign. He disagreed with Lalonde.

“Certainly our campaign is taking it very seriously,” Barley said. “We’re running a complete campaign. But I do believe Kelly will win this race and that it will be by a decent margin.”

Barley took umbrage with the DCCC’s poll, and said the committee released the poll results as a way to throw the DiNicola campaign a bone.

“If they thought it was this close they wouldn’t be pulling their money out of the race,” Barley said.

The DCCC was running television advertisements in the 16th District as recently as Oct. 1, various media have reported, and the ads were the committee’s first political ads in Pennsylvania during this election period.

The Siena College poll also asked locals about the nomination of the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh.

In the district, results show, 56 percent supported Kavanaugh’s nomination while 39 percent opposed it. Five percent said they didn’t know.

As for the allegations of teenage sexual assault against Kavanaugh, 29 percent in the district said they believed the allegations while 39 percent said they did not. A large portion, 32 percent, said they didn’t know.

Both political organizers said those figures reflect their own experiences on the campaign trail, but neither are sure what effect it may have on the race.

“It maybe got a few Republicans or independent moderates more engaged in the race earlier in the process,” Barley said. “I think Democrats were already feeling fairly motivated.”

Lalonde said many people she’s spoken to have problems with Kavanaugh’s attitude during hearings more so than the allegations.

“Some think his behaviors was not adequate as a judge,” Lalonde said. “That’s really what I believe.”

The only effect the nomination had on the race, she said, was to inspire “a little more division in the country” along partisan lines.

Both Lalonde and Barley agreed on one final piece of data. Google released county-level figures that show what political issues were the most searched.

In Butler County, health care positions are searched more than immigration, tariffs, abortion and guns, the data shows. The same is true for virtually all of Pennsylvania.

“On both sides there are still competing visions about what health care reform should look like,” Barley said.

Lalonde said she spoke with some voters about medication costs while knocking on doors for DiNicola.

“From my perspective, health care is and always has been big,” Lalonde said. “It just impacts so many people.”