with less than four weeks to go before election day predictions are shifting for New Jersey's competitive 7th District Congressional race the cook political report is now changing the odds from a tossup between incumbent Republican Tom Kean and Democratic Challenger Sue Altman to favoring Republicans proving the state's only true swing District to be one of the tougher ones for Democrats to flip that's despite President Biden carrying voters there by almost four points in the 2020 election a major swing from 2016 when the district backed Trump for more on what went into the change I'm joined by Erin Covey she's the US House editor at the cook political report Erin it's good to talk to you so the cook political report shifted the odds in Tom Kean's favor can you share what factors went into to that decision yeah so just to start I want to say that New Jersey 7th District is still quite a competitive race this this is a competitive District Biden carried it by four points in 2020 um and at the end of the day we still expect Harris should probably win this District but we do believe that it looks like Kean is on track to likely overperform Trump's margin in this district and is in a relatively decent position to win his race um part of the reason for that is that despite the fact that Sue Altman his Democratic opponent has outspent him on the airwaves recently he still has maintained a persistent Edge in polling now that edge varies from a couple of points to a larger margin in polls that we've seen both public and private but he still managed to retain that edge and Altman also isn't getting that much help from outside Democratic groups that are playing in other competitive districts at this point now are these internal polls that you refer to because I mean we just don't see head-to-head polls when it comes to Congressional races which I would imagine makes it tough to forecast it is tough and you know this is um this cycle in particular we have seen fewer Public House polls which is really unfortunate um but luckily at the cook political report we're also relying on seeing internal data from both parties that we use to make our judgments about these race rating changes and so we we look at the internal data we look at the spending decisions we talk to the campaigns and that's how we come to these decisions but unfortunately a lot of that data that we're looking at is not available for the public to see yeah well let's talk about that spending then Aon because I as you mentioned outside groups at least Democratic outside groups aren't pouring in the type of cash that we expected um Sue Altman had a a pretty uh groundbreaking spending uh rather fundraising quarter this past go around a little over $2 million but if we're not seeing spending from packs like the House Majority Democratic uh Congressional Campaign Committee does that mean that Democrats don't think it's worth putting money into the race well first of all I'll just say there is still time for these outside groups to make money changes these groups shift around their money at the last minute a lot of times based on where they see these races headed at the last minute but I'll also say um a major factor for this race is that it's in the really expensive New York City media market and so it costs a lot more for outside groups and for campaigns to go up on broadcast TV here and so that contributes in part to some of these spinning decisions I think um at the same time there are other competitive races in the New York City media market across the Hudson River that are getting more outside attention and some of those races it seems like both groups view is a little bit more competitive than this one um you mentioned you know internal polls Sue alman's campaign had a poll putting her about 2% behind Tom Kan so essentially they're saying hey this is Within Reach For Us don't give up don't turn away make sure you come to the polls how much stock should we put in that because you got to take into account the margin of error there right right I mean I think that this is absolutely still a competitive race um and Altman has a real Fighting Chance at flipping this seat I don't want to Discount that at all at the same time though um you know there's a reason that campaigns put out polls a lot of times it's because they're trying to help boost their fundraising um and attract outside donors and from what we've seen from the other data Kane has had a bit larger of a lead I mean that's from both democratic and Republic public sources and so when you're looking at polls that are released by campaigns um I think a lot of times the pollsters that they use are very good it doesn't mean that the results are inaccurate but usually campaigns have a motive in releasing them and so you have to take it in the context of that and you also have to remember that we don't have a lot of other outside polling of this race that we can compare it to so we don't know whether it's um a true outlier liar or whether it's indicative of the race as a whole yeah it's a big factor there uh Erin Covey is the US House editor at the cook political report Erin thanks so much thank you [Music]