In an internal poll from brilliant corners Research & Strategies, Democrat Chris Deluzio has forged a six-point advantage over Republican opponent Jeremy Shaffer in the chase for the 17th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A previous survey from Lake Research Partners in July showed Deluzio with a 1-point edge over Shaffer.

PA’s 17th Congressional District includes suburbs north, west and immediately east of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, plus exurban/rural Beaver County.

The internal findings from brilliant corners and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed Deluzio with a plus-13 net favorability rating (28-15), while Shaffer was just at plus-1 (21-20). Forty-two percent of respondents recognized Deluzio’s name to just 40 percent for Shaffer.

We not that internal polls are polls sponsored by either a candidate running in the race or an outside group that has endorsed one of the candidates. In other words, these are polls that have an agenda behind them, says FiveThirtyEight – and that agenda is usually to make their preferred candidate look good. As a result, they are usually too good to be true for their sponsor. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver found in 2017 that internal and partisan polls conducted during the last three weeks of U.S. House general elections overstated their party’s candidate by an average of 4 or 5 percentage points.

brilliant corners surveyed 400 likely voters in the District from September 18-20. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percent.