The candidates running to represent Pennsylvania’s 8^th Congressional District are trading allegations of voter fraud in the closing hours of a closely contested race. A decision by the Bucks County Board of Elections could mean that we might have to wait to learn the results of the race between incumbent Democrat Patrick Murphy and challenger Mike Fitzpatrick.

At issue are at least 8,000 absentee ballots. On Friday, the Republican-controlled elections board voted to sequester the ballots until they can investigate the allegations. If the election is as close as it was in 2006 – Murphy beat Fitzpatrick by 1518 votes – and the polls showing a close race are accurate, then those ballots could swing the election.

The Allentown Morning Call reported Friday that Republicans allege Democrats improperly solicited absentee votes using a misleading mailer. While not illegal, the mailer purported to be from the non-existent Pennsylvania Voter Assistance Office and directed voters to return the application for an absentee ballot in time or lose the ability to vote. The GOP also alleges that canvassers solicited absentee ballots by filling out ballots for people and getting them to sign other family members’ names. The Morning Call reported that the Republican Party is challenging all 270 ballots generated by the mailer.

Murphy and the Democratic Party counter that Republicans are engaging in illegal voter suppression and fraud. The day before the Bucks County Board of Elections meeting, Murphy put out a press release accusing the Fitzpatrick campaign of instructing voters to forge the signatures of students away at college on absentee ballots. The Murphy campaign is also alleging voter suppression because six times as many ballots from Democrats as Republicans have been rejected in Bucks County.

On Monday, Murphy fired the latest salvo, issuing another press release, including a pair of YouTube videos, with statements from 16 voters, including war veterans, claiming that they were victims of voter suppression.

The Board of Elections did vote to extend the deadline to request an absentee ballot from the original date of 5 p.m. Friday to 8 p.m. Election Day. Still, if the margin of victory is small, the 8^th district will likely be in for a recount and possibly litigation over the validity of votes.

One more has been added to the schedule, and this one is set to go down Oct. 18. It’ll be aired on the local ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, giving Republican Tom Corbett and Democrat Dan Onorato what could potentially be their biggest debate audience of the campaign.

That debate will come just two days after the candidates have their second debate, a televised one in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of outside ad buys in the Senate race recently.

First, there was this latest TV spot from conservative group Crossroads GPS, those guys who just love to hit Democrat Joe Sestak on spending.

Then, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chimed in with its latest ad, which tries to frame Republican Pat Toomey as China-friendly outsourcer of jobs.

And to top it all off, Toomey’s buddies at the Club for Growth have yet another ad of their own taking Sestak to task for stimulus spending.

There’s also a new ad in the 15th Congressional District, where Democratic challenger John Callahan is pushing back against criticism from incumbent republican Charlie Dent that he’s not the budget-balancer he claims to be.

Check it out below.

And last but not least, it appears that Republican Mike Fitzpatrick has snagged an endorsement from a local police union. We haven’t yet seen a release from the Fitzpatrick campaign, but The Inquirer reported that FOP Lodge 5 had made its decision.

As The Inky notes, that’s something of a blow for Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8), who’s the son of a retired cop and has boasted police support before.

Former Riegelsville Borough Mayor Tood Myers and current Nockamixon Township Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Nancy Janyszeski both threw their support behind Murphy in statements Wednesday. Their endorsements came as most polls show Fitzpatrick holding a lead against Murphy, who unseated him after one term in 2006.

“Whether it’s assistance for flood prone communities or support for police and first responders, Patrick Murphy has worked tirelessly on behalf of Bucks County families,” Myers said. “Even though I’m a Republican, I’m proud to support Patrick. I have worked with both candidates, and Patrick Murphy is clearly the better choice to represent the people of Bucks County.”

The Bucks County race has emerged as a battleground in the fight to control Congress, and Fitzpatrick has been performing well despite heavy TV advertising by Murphy. The race is currently No. 4 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

“I’m proud to be a Republican, but I can’t support Mike Fitzpatrick’s extreme policies, like his opposition to stem cell research,” Janyszeski said. “Patrick Murphy shares my values and is the type of leader Bucks County needs.”

Yes, there’s yet another set of numbers we missed, this one from McClatchy Newspapers and Marist. Like every other pollster under the sun, these folks found Republicans Pat Toomey and Tom Corbett leading in the races for senate and governor, respectively.

Toomey leads Democrat Joe Sestak by nine points, 51 percent to 42 percent. And Corbett leads Democrat Dan Onorato by 12 points, 53 percent to 41 percent.

Those results are largely consistent with where the polls were a couple weeks ago, though there have been other indications that both races are getting tighter.

Meanwhile, Congressman Patrick Murphy’s (D-8) chief of staff has a new gig: running Rahm Emanuel’s campaign to be mayor of Chicago. Politico broke the news Sunday morning of Scott Fairchild’s new job. The influential and connected operative has been with Murphy since his first run for Congress in 2006. He’s going to stay with Murphy until after his Nov. 2 rematch against Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.

And Congressman Charlie Dent (R-15) has a new TV ad. It takes advantage of what appears to be a moment of wonkish confusion by Democratic challenger John Callahan during a recent debate.

Check out the ad below.

Correction: This blog post originally misstated the timing of Scott Fairchild’s departure as Patrick Murphy’s chief of staff. He is leaving after the Nov. 2 election, not before.

Well, we recently got our hands on much more data from the poll, which was commissioned by a liberal-leaning veterans’ organization and a labor union—groups that obviously favor Murphy.

While it’s always a question how pollsters select and weight their samples of likely voters, the methodology by Harstad Strategic Research appears to be more than Kosher. The questions aren’t designed to sway respondents one way or another. Others questioned the results because they came from a Democratic poll firm, commissioned by Democratic-leaning groups. But that’s the nature of all internal polling, and we’re in the business of reporting these results.

And while our headline appeared to peeve some people by describing the poll as “third-party,” that description is only meant to imply that neither campaign commissioned the survey itself.

This isn’t to say the poll is right or wrong. It found a more narrow margin in the race than any public or private poll reported to date.

But it’s legit.

You can check out the poll memo here, and the full survey questions and toplines here.

The new 30-second spot, unveiled Tuesday, is Murphy’s second of the campaign. He has been advertising heavily in a tough Bucks County race, with most polls showing Fitzpatrick, the one-term congressman who Murphy knocked off in 2006, holding a lead.

In the ad, a worker who says she lost her job to outsourcing says that Fitzpatrick “broke his word and voted for bad trade deals.”

See the ad below. It will be fact-checked later as part of pa2010.com‘s AD WATCH series.

The survey commissioned by the Service Employees International Union’s and Vote Vets found Murphy winning 49 percent of the 8th District vote, just more than Fitzpatrick’s 46 percent. With just five percent of likely voters undecided, the results make the race essentially a dead heat. A three-point lead is better than Murphy has fared in any public or private polling that has been reported so far.

Neither a poll memo nor survey questions and crosstabs were available upon the release of the results late Monday, making it impossible to independently asses the merits of the poll. A Franklin & Marshall College survey released late last week found Fitzpatrick sporting a wide lead. An internal GOP poll has also found Fitzpatrick ahead, while an internal Murphy poll put the Democrat up slightly.

The Bucks County district, currently No. 4 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings, is increasingly seen as a battleground. The survey of 507 by the firm Harstad Strategic Research was conducted Sept. 20-22, about a week after Murphy’s heavy TV advertising buy started. A release describing the poll did not provide a margin of error.

The state’s AFL-CIO rolled out its latest mail pieces Monday, the third week in a row it’s hitting up homes across Pennsylvania. The new mail pieces, targeting Senate candidate Pat Toomey and six GOP House candidates, paint Republican hopefuls as friends of Wall Street who want to outsource American jobs.

They err on at least one count, the same count that has tripped up Democrats for months: As we’ve noted before, signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge does not automatically make you a supporter of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

Anyway, you can check out all the latest mail pieces for yourself. Click here for the one targeting Toomey. And here are the ones targeting Mike Kelly, Pat Meehan, Mike Fitzpatrick, Tom Marino, Lou Barletta and Tim Burns.

Meanwhile, here comes another surrogate for Democrat Manan Trivedi. Michael Dukakis, that former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate who looked bad in an Army tanker, is headlining a fundraiser for Trivedi’s 6th District campaign Thursday in Philadelphia. The invitation we got a hold of says it’s going down early in the evening at the fancy Water Works restaurant, with a minimum $100 contribution. Folks on the host committee include prominent Democratic fundraisers Mark Aronchick and Ken Weinstein.

And lastly, the folks over at Democrat Bryan Lentz’s campaign have been having fun with some video from Lentz’s debate last week against Republican Pat Meehan. Maybe we went a little easy on Meehan in our coverage, because friend-of-the-site Bill Bender wrote (accurately) in The Daily News that “Lentz was clearly the superior debater Tuesday, delivering concise answers, while Meehan, sweating heavily, often fell back on generalities and stumbled through his closing statement.”

Anyway, the Lentz folks put together something of a brief highlight reel, modeled off those very memorable “Priceless” MasterCard ads. We’re not sure where Lentz’s people got their cash figures, and they probably won’t match up with campaign finance data—but hey, it’s a fun watch.

Team Meehan wasn’t laughing.

“For weeks now, Bryan Lentz has shown signs of a desperate and panicked candidate,” Meehan campaign spokeswoman Virginia Davis said. “All he is trying to do is distract voters from his support of Nancy Pelosi and the failed policies coming out of Washington.”

Check out the video below.

The Franklin & Marshall College survey released Thursday found Fitzpatrick leading by 14 points among likely voters, 49 percent to 35 percent. That’s a leader larger than the ones documented recently by both candidates’ internal polling. Fifteen percent of likely voters are still undecided, and Fitzpatrick’s lead is smaller when all registered voters are polled, but remains formidable at 10 percent.

The poll’s release comes as the Bucks County district is increasingly seen as a fierce battleground by political forecasters and insiders. Murphy, sporting a large financial advantage, has been advertising heavily in the expensive Philadelphia media market. But only 37 percent of voters in the district rate President Obama’s job performance positively, and Murphy has become very much tied to the White House in the minds of many voters.

Almost half of registered voters in the district believe it’s time for a change after two terms from Murphy.

The survey of 464 voters, conducted Sept. 14-19, had a margin of error of 4.5 percent. The margin of error for the 379 likely voters surveyed was five percent.

Click here to see the poll.

The National Republican Congressional Committee commissioned polls in the 3rd, 7th, 8th and 11th Districts—the same four districts in which the committees recently bought TV time.

The spending was disclosed on independent expenditure filings Sunday. The checks were cut Friday, according to campaign finance data, but it’s likely the polls themselves were taken before the NRCC pulled the trigger on its local ad campaigns. The four districts targeted are the four most competitive on pa2010.com‘s Congressional Power Rankings.

Almost all the polls were conducted by GOP polling firm Ayres, McHenry & Associates.