The race to succeed chest-baring, Craigslist-dabbling Rep. Chris Lee in upstate New York has not received much national notice. Events in Abbottabad have crowded out other stories. But Democrats are excited by a Siena College poll suggesting the possibility of an upset in the May 24 election.

New York’s 26th congressional district stretches from the suburbs east of Buffalo to the suburbs west of Rochester, a mostly rural, white, and Republican part of New York. As Michael Barone notes in The Almanac of American Politics, “People speak not in the pungent accents of New York City but in flat Midwestern tones.” The 26th gave 55 percent of its vote to George W. Bush in 2004, and 52 percent to McCain in 2008.