Things are looking a little better for Democrat Carolyn Long, who's running for Congress against four-term incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington's 3rd Congressional District.

Friday afternoon Long's campaign released internal polling that shows the Democrat beating Herrera Beutler by 2 points—45 to 43—with a 10-point lead among self-described independents.

With a 4.9 percent margin of error, the race is pretty much tied up. Long came within 7 points (35 to 42) of tying Herrera Beutler in the August primary, though, so these results indicate a big jump for Long and a tiny step up for the incumbent. For the last few weeks Herrera Beutler has been running two negative ads on television in the Portland media market. They do not appear to be working very well.

Progressive pollsters Lake Research Partners conducted the survey of 400 "likely November 2018 general election voters" between October 9 and 11. Given the dates of the poll, the results also suggest that the Kavanaugh furor buoying Republicans in other races might be dying down a bit—that is, if it ever whipped up the independent voters of southwest Washington.

This is slightly more hopeful news for Democrats in Washington after a Crosscut/Elway poll released earlier this week showed Republican Dino Rossi beating Kim Schrier by 10 points in the 8th Congressional District. A New York Times poll conducted a little earlier in the month gave Schrier a one-point lead over Rossi.

If LRP's numbers are any good, then right now it looks like Long has a better chance of flipping a district than any other Dem running for Congress against a Republican in Washington State, which is kind of insane. Trump won the 3rd by 7 points.