OH-Sen 2022: So you’re telling me there’s a chance

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I don't like Mandel, and I find him a weasel, but this is disappointing to hear about Vance.

What is disappointing?

Having a $10k fundraiser with Peter Theil.

Just curious but is this the first you’ve heard of JD Vance?

Anyway, I strongly support him over every viable option but Timken. Mandel and Moreno are literal joke candidates backed by the Israeli lobby and the affirmative action wing of the Republican Party, respectively.

[Senator Incitatus]

I don't like Mandel, and I find him a weasel, but this is disappointing to hear about Vance.

What is disappointing?

Having a $10k fundraiser with Peter Theil.

Just curious but is this the first you’ve heard of JD Vance?

Anyway, I strongly support him over every viable option but Timken. Mandel and Moreno are literal joke candidates backed by the Israeli lobby and the affirmative action wing of the Republican Party, respectively.

Anti-semtism and racism, classic combo.

Look at their endorsement lists and tell me this is not true.



Vance is the candidate whose support comes from serious people who care about policies that actually affect the future of this country (Lighthizer, O'Brien, Banks). Timken has the advantage of support within the state and can claim to authentically represent the state, which also gives her an edge over the two and probably Vance as well, but it doesn't appear she'll keep up with him.

[Senator Incitatus]

I still think Vance will pull it off, but it might be wishful thinking.
Trump said he will endorse someone in this race and I have a strong feeling it'll be Timken.

Not happening.

Mandel only loses the primary if at least one of the more serious candidates drops out, and even then, that might not be enough. Regardless, that seems highly unlikely at this point.

All of the candidates are more serious than Mandel so I expect at least one of them will drop out.

I don't see why anyone thinks the candidate with by far the highest name recognition in the field who is nonetheless consistently polling at <25% (and is likely to trail four other candidates in spending) is anything close to the favorite. I'd put him third, maybe fourth. Only has a real shot if Trump does the unexpected and endorses him or the more serious candidates implode.

Never seen a weaker candidate referred to as a front-runner, let alone a lock.

[Senator Incitatus]

I still think Vance will pull it off, but it might be wishful thinking.
Trump said he will endorse someone in this race and I have a strong feeling it'll be Timken.

Not happening.

Mandel only loses the primary if at least one of the more serious candidates drops out, and even then, that might not be enough. Regardless, that seems highly unlikely at this point.

All of the candidates are more serious than Mandel so I expect at least one of them will drop out.

I don't see why anyone thinks the candidate with by far the highest name recognition in the field who is nonetheless consistently polling at <25% (and is likely to trail four other candidates in spending) is anything close to the favorite. I'd put him third, maybe fourth. Only has a real shot if Trump does the unexpected and endorses him or the more serious candidates implode.

Never seen a weaker candidate referred to as a front-runner, let alone a lock.

They might be more serious in so far that they aren't quite as deranged on Twitter, but they're not as serious in terms of appeal to the base. They are also all far too into themselves to drop out for the betterment of the state. Maybe Dolan drops out, but his doing so won't substantively benefit anyone enough to make a difference given his low polling numbers.

Mandel is only sub-25% in polls paid for by his primary opponents. If you average the last few polls together, you get a clearer picture:

Mandel - 29%
Vance - 13%
Timken - 11%
Gibbons - 9%
Dolan - 4%
Moreno - 2%
Undecided - 32%

Aggregates are generally more accurate than any single poll, and the aggregate puts Mandel within the margin of error of leading the total number of undecided voters. That pretty much seals the deal in a field this divided.

Can’t remember the last time I saw such blatant manipulation in the name of “averaging,” so I have to assume your post  was a complete  accident:

1. The most recent poll was an independent by Trafalgar that has Mandel at 21%, consistent with the others. In fact, that’s the only independent poll and it’s from a top tier pollster.
2. The Fabrizio & Lee poll is not paid for by a candidate, only by an organization that separately backed Vance, so that’s obviously a significant misstatement.
3. When someone polls consistently across all of his opponents’ polling, we can take that seriously, unless you’re suggesting a conspiracy.
4. To rig the average, you had to go back four months to include two outlier polls. Aggregating polls is great, so long as they’re recent.
5. You completely ignored that those polls were Mandel internals, making them unreliable by your own standard. If anything, they’re less reliable for the proposition offered, since a candidate’s own numbers are the ones most likely to be filtered by the internal release selection bias.
6. Where the hell did “a candidate leading the undecideds with 30% makes him a lock” come from? That’s absurd. A candidate with sky-high ID polling at 30% against a field of relative unknowns is not close to a lock.

Complete misreading of this race.

[Senator Incitatus]

Another poll out today—yes, an internal—with Mandel at 18%.

Guessing 25% will be about his ceiling from here on out.

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Tim Ryan is more likely to lose the primary than win the general.

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Bold of Timken on run on being a woman in a party that is increasingly male/masculine. It could work in such a divided field.

[Senator Incitatus]

Bold of Timken on run on being a woman in a party that is increasingly male/masculine. It could work in such a divided field.

Nobody is attracted to a campaign because of the gender of the candidate, especially in the GOP, in fact it probably turns people away. They want someone who focuses on the issues they are concerned about, and not one who boasts about how much of a girlboss she is.

This is definitely not true. The Republican Party continues to have a strong contingent of girlbosses both institutionally and among voters. I know several and they often prefer to vote for women. Like I said, it’s a marginal strategy, but this is a campaign being run on the margins.

[Senator Incitatus]

JD France?
https://mobile.twitter.com/JustinBarasky/status/1514272230670278657

This is one of the stupidest tweets I've ever seen, and it's a high bar.

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Seems obvious that the runner-up here is going to take Brown's seat in 2024, no?

[Senator Incitatus]

-snip-

Just…what on Earth are you talking about? Literally his only supporters were aggressively online before a couple of weeks ago, there’s a reason he was on 4% before Trump came in to the picture.

If he wins the primary it’ll be because of Trump, if he wins the GE it’ll be because of the R next to his name - in spite of everything else about him.

If I’m guilty of overestimating people then so be it, but I think there is something deeply wrong with you if you believe a multi millionaire hedge fund guy who worked for *Peter Thiel* and changes ideologies the way normal people change clothes is ‘relatable’.

Most of his gains were because he finally started spending on ads, as everyone who knew what they were talking about predicted he would. The Trump endorsement rumors really only hit public airwaves in the last week. I would imagine most Ohioans still don't know about it or found out on the local news tonight.

[Senator Incitatus]

If you think Vance (and Thiel) care about anything besides their bank accounts I pity you.

Ultra-rich people are the last people on Earth who care about their bank accounts, excluding those without bank accounts.

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Wonder if the runner-up in this race is simply going to take on (and probably beat) Brown in 2024.

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I have no idea who wins this race (who can understand the minds of Republicans )but am rooting for Dolan even though he would be the R's best GE candidate because Dolan winning would piss off Trump.

As has been said a few times, Dolan is the only candidate who could lose the general, since no candidate is losing a head-to-head race with Ryan.

[Senator Incitatus]

Vance should win the general, but it probably won’t be by much more than Trump's margin even in a R wave. My early prediction is 53-44 or so, a very underwhelming result in a year like this. I also think he would have been in real danger of losing the seat in a D-leaning (and potentially even neutral) year.

What makes you think he's a weak candidate? He seems like a fairly strong candidate to me.

From the look of it, he's going to win all but a handful of counties.

A pretty large number of campaign missteps, having a platform decently far from a Generic R platform, being held to under a third of the vote in spite of having Trump's endorsement.

He hasn't been held to under a third yet.

[Senator Incitatus]

Vance is too far right for this seat

I don't think so. Mandel would've 100% won because ppl don't care about "ideology"

JD's problem is that he is a documented soy boy suddenly running as a Trump Republican, notably funded by a billionaire whose hobby is collecting the body fluids of white, young men so he can attain immortality. He's a phony and everybody knows, which is why he couldn't even muster 1/3 of the primary vote even with $$$$ and the fuhrer's endorsement

You are trying so hard. Keep it up; very funny.

[Senator Incitatus]

-snip-

This is (a) a literal Democratic staffer (b) reporting a single-word quote from September 2021 and (c) as most could probably easily guess, intentionally misrepresenting his stance and the question he was asked, which was thoroughly covered at the time.

Staffers' tweets should probably be banned from this thread.

edit: Actually, based on his Twitter profile and a quick Google search, he's a former staffer. Not surprised that he's unemployed. Maybe he specifically should be banned from the thread.

[Senator Incitatus]

How much of that fundraising was in-state? Very funny to see "white Rust Belt man" become the Democratic equivalent of black female Republican in terms of fundraising from the poorly informed.

Fetterman would be in the same boat if he weren't facing an even more absurd version of the same strategy from Republicans, in a more favorable state.

[Senator Incitatus]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-gop-freakout-over-jd-vances-senate-campaign?ref=home

Interesting article about JD Vance's dumpster fire of a campaign.

Good to see a return to the correct belief that the campaign doesn’t start until Labor Day. Summer politics is such a nuisance that it should be prohibited.

[Senator Incitatus]

NEW FROM OHIO: the same fake undersourced story from months ago

[Senator Incitatus]

Unless "more than half" is just very opaque word choice here (and it very well may be), this is actually not a great sign. Ryan likely needs to be winning ~70% (if not more) of these voters to hit his win number statewide.

Is that the target for Brown-Trump voters or specifically women Brown-Trump voters?

I think Vance winning is inevitable, but there's no doubt he's making this closer than it has to be. Predictions of a 2016 Senate like margin certainly have aged poorly.

To the extent that anyone made an insane R+21 prediction at any point, their prediction hasn't aged at all yet; it's only just September. In 2016 Portman's lead was somewhere in the high 40s at this stage. Vance has already hit 50 in a poll quicker than Portman did (Aug. 19 versus Sep. 7).

[Senator Incitatus]

Vance has already hit 50 in a poll quicker than Portman did (Aug. 19 versus Sep. 7).

Yes, but that's a Trafalgar poll, which also gave Tiffany Smilie in Washington a significantly higher percentage of the vote than she earned from real votes in her state's combined primary. Vance is favored on the fundamentals, but he hasn't "hit 50".

I'm simply pointing out it's absurd to say any predictions (again, a prediction I never saw anyone make) have or haven't come true when the campaign starts this weekend. At least one of the few indicators we have so far shows Vance could do very well—Portman did very well despite not having this indicator at this point.

But if we're debunking pollsters based on single polls of theirs, it would make as much or more sense to say Trafalgar is underestimating Vance because they never found Trump hit 50 in Ohio.

[Senator Incitatus]

Vance knows Ohio has the largest Ukrainian American community in the country right? That it’s large enough that in prior elections candidates have courted them because they were seen as swing voters and critical to a close election?

Vance knows that Victoria Spartz, a republican Ukrainian born congresswomen serves in next door in Indiana right?

(a) You simply made that up. It's not a top five state in Ukrainian ancestry or origin. This July article from the Census Bureau doesn't even bother mentioning Ohio once, but its population claiming Ukrainian ancestry is certainly less than a small town's worth.

(b) Spartz herself has been loudly critical of American funding for the Ukrainian government, maybe moreso than House member after Massie. Granted, Vance's comments (out-of-context) are callously dismissive of suffering. That's different, but it's unfair to Spartz to imply divided loyalties just because of her ethnicity. The United States does not require a blood quantum for nationality or adherence to the national interest.

(c) Even if Spartz did have foreign loyalties, could he not disagree with a member of his party? I think a lot of what people like about Vance is that he's not the traditional sort of coward who would simply bend over backwards by making bad policy to appeal to dubious interests, merely because they exist.

[Senator Incitatus]

Vance knows Ohio has the largest Ukrainian American community in the country right? That it’s large enough that in prior elections candidates have courted them because they were seen as swing voters and critical to a close election?

Vance knows that Victoria Spartz, a republican Ukrainian born congresswomen serves in next door in Indiana right?

(a) You simply made that up. It's not a top five state in Ukrainian ancestry or origin. This July article from the Census Bureau doesn't even bother mentioning Ohio once, but its population claiming Ukrainian ancestry is certainly less than a small town's worth.

(b) Spartz herself has been loudly critical of American funding for the Ukrainian government, maybe moreso than House member after Massie. Granted, Vance's comments (out-of-context) are callously dismissive of suffering.

(c) Even if Spartz did have foreign loyalties, could he not disagree with a member of his party? I think a lot of what people like about Vance is that he's not the traditional sort of coward who would simply bend over backwards by making bad policy to appeal to dubious interests, merely because they exist.

Data from 2009 says there are 49,000 Ukrainian-Americans in Ohio (fifth largest such tally in the country) ... This isn't even getting into Russian-Americans...

Well, I linked much better data from 2022 showing that Ohio is clearly not in the top five and the original absurd claim was that it was #1.

As far as Russian ethnics go, I would actually guess they feel far less intensely about this since: (a) many more identify with the opposition in Russia for various reasons, (b) they are far more assimilated given historical immigration patterns, (c) Russia is the invading country, which almost always stokes less intense feelings in war.

The people this will actually rally are American nationalists, i.e., Vance's base.

[Senator Incitatus]

Looks like there were actually some empty seats at a Trump rally for once: