"There's enor­mous value in in­cum­bency," said Chris Borick, a po­lit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Muhlen­berg Col­lege. "You've suc­ceeded in win­ning a pri­mary be­fore, and you have higher name rec­og­ni­tion. You've built up re­la­tion­ships within your dis­trict while serv­ing in of­fice ... those are ma­jor fac­tors."

Those con­nec­tions have been a hall­mark of Lee's mes­sag­ing: that she's served com­mu­ni­ties ef­fec­tively across the ex­panse of the 12th Con­gres­sio­nal Dis­trict.

It's also part of what Pa­tel has used as am­mu­ni­tion on the de­bate stage: that her op­po­nent is too far to the left to rep­resent the area.

It's an ar­gu­ment that will need to stick if Pa­tel is to have a chance. And she must get Dem­o­crats to turn out in the far-flung ar­eas of the dis­trict — and in Squir­rel Hill, one area where she has seized on her dif­fer­ences with Lee.

"Pa­tel knows where she needs to get her votes from ... turn­out is go­ing to be very im­por­tant," said Larry Ceisler, a pub­lic af­fairs ex­ec­u­tive based in Phil­a­del­phia who tracks var­i­ous races across Penn­syl­va­nia.

De­mo­graph­ics: Squir­rel Hill and be­yond

An ad­age of pol­i­tics is that a pro­fu­sion of yard signs isn't nec­es­sar­ily an ac­cu­rate ba­rom­e­ter for which way an elec­tion might go — be­cause yard signs don't vote.

But in the case of the Bha­vini Pa­tel signs in and around Squir­rel Hill, they're at least an in­di­ca­tion that she has gained trac­tion with vot­ers in that neigh­bor­hood. Mul­ti­ple res­i­dents con­firmed last week that Pa­tel has their votes.

The two can­di­dates have sparred re­peat­edly over the U.S. in­volve­ment in the Is­rael-Ha­mas war.

Pa­tel says Lee has ig­nored Jew­ish con­cerns in Squir­rel Hill since Ha­mas' at­tack on Is­rael and be­fore­hand. The in­cum­bent count­ers by say­ing she has al­ways trav­eled across the dis­trict and talked with lead­ers of var­i­ous re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions and be­liefs.

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