LaMalfa's Electoral Circumstances

Last Election

LaMalfa ran for a fourth term in 2018, facing Democrat Audrey Denney in the US House election. He won re-election with 54.9% of the vote compared to Denney's 45.1%.

Primary Election Outlook

LaMalfa only had one primary opponent (Gregory Cheadle) in 2018, and defeated him soundly with 98,354 votes to Cheadle's 11,660. This has been a common theme, as the number of challengers has decreased over time, from four challengers in his first election in 2016 to only one in the last election. It would be expected that if LaMalfa continues to do what he is doing, he will have few, if any, challengers in the next primary election.

General Election Outlook

LaMalfa has won re-election every time since 2012, and has had double digit victories each time (including by 22 percentage point in 2014) except for the most recent election in 2018, in which he won by 9.8 percentage points. Again, it would be expected that if LaMalfa, continues to do what has worked for him, he could experience another solid win in the next general election

Current Prediction

It would not be surprising to see LaMalfa run for re-election and win once again. He has had comfortable victories each year since his initial election, and his most narrow victory was still over 9 percentage points, so its safe to say that LaMalfa feels confident in his district to continue to re-elect him. Denney plans to run against LaMalfa again in 2020, so it will be interesting to see how that will play out when they go against each other once more.

2016 vote

In 2016, LaMalfa won his third term against Democrat Jim Reed with 59.1% of the vote compared to Reed's 40.9.

Campaign Finance Status

LaMalfa spent $1,089,951 on his 2018 campaign while raising $1,028,857. His top contributors are National Cattleman's Beef Association, AKT Development, and Montna Farms.

Major Issues

LaMalfa ran on typical conservative issues in 2018 such as cutting spending and lowering taxes along with cracking down on illegal immigraiton. However, he also ran on issues particular to his district, such as bring more water storage and reservoirs in Northern California in order to help out agriculture and provide for drought relief and flood protection.