A new internal poll released Wednesday by Democrat J.D. Ford’s congressional campaign portrays Indiana’s 5th District as a dead heat, a striking claim in a district that has been reliably Republican since it was redrawn after the 2020 census — and one that comes just a day after national Democrats formally added the race to their target list.
The survey, conducted July 16-20 by Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm working for the Ford campaign, shows incumbent Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz leading Ford, a state senator from Indianapolis, 48 percent to 46 percent — within the poll’s margin of error.
The poll paints a difficult picture for the three-term congresswoman. According to the campaign’s summary, 51 percent of district voters view Spartz unfavorably, against 34 percent favorable. A majority, 53 percent, see her as “part of the problem in Washington,” and 49 percent consider her ineffective. The survey also found President Trump, who carried the district by 17 points in 2024, now viewed unfavorably by 51 percent of its voters.
“Hoosiers in the 5th district want a leader who will make life more affordable for us,” Ford said in a statement accompanying the release. “For six years, Victoria Spartz has used her position in Congress to rig the rules to benefit herself and her big corporate donors while our friends and neighbors struggle to make ends meet.”
The Spartz campaign did not issue an immediate response.
Internal campaign polls deserve caution. They are typically released only when favorable to the campaign paying for them, and their assumptions about who will turn out in November cannot be independently verified. Even this poll’s own numbers show Republicans holding a five-point advantage on the generic ballot, 45 percent to 40 percent. The poll’s most optimistic finding for Ford — a six-point lead — emerges only after respondents heard positive information about both candidates, a common technique that tends to overstate a challenger’s ceiling.
The district’s recent history also argues for skepticism. Since redistricting made it safer Republican territory in 2021, no Democrat has come close. Spartz won reelection in 2024 with 56.6 percent of the vote, an 18-point margin, and the major election forecasters rated the seat safely Republican throughout that cycle.
Still, there are signs this race is drawing attention it hasn’t seen before. On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the 5th District to its “Districts in Play” list — one of 12 Republican-held seats, nearly all carried comfortably by Trump in 2024, that the House Democrats’ campaign arm is targeting in November. The designation typically signals that national money and organizational support will follow, and it puts Spartz in the company of higher-profile Republican targets such as Colorado’s Lauren Boebert.
Ford, the first openly gay member of the Indiana General Assembly, has served two terms in the state Senate. His campaign reported raising more than $365,000 in the second quarter and has argued Spartz’s war chest is comparatively thin. Spartz, first elected in 2020, survived a crowded and expensive Republican primary in 2024 after briefly announcing she would not seek reelection.
Whether the 5th District — anchored in Hamilton County’s fast-growing suburbs — is truly in play won’t be clear until independent polling and spending decisions confirm what the Ford campaign’s numbers suggest. Midterm cycles have historically favored the party out of the White House, and Democrats are betting that suburban districts like this one are where any wave would break first. Republicans, for now, can point to two decades of results that say otherwise.
The general election is Nov. 3.