PA GOV 2022: Stick a fork in it

[wbrocks67]

Shapiro continues to out-smart the competition

https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1522220393406373888

[wbrocks67]

Trump endorsement likely coming in the next few days. Either Barletta or Mastriano.
I don't have any sources, I just have a gut feeling about it.

I would imagine it would be Mastriano, given Barletta has been faltering or he has the stench of 'loser' on him from 2018, and with these recent polling results...

[wbrocks67]

Side note - how in the world Torsella let Stacy Garrity beat him in 2020 is just.... insane.

But I imagine Garrity played it like Barnette did in 2020. No one knew how crazy they actually were until after the election.

https://twitter.com/Inky_Dan/status/1522749538183880704

[wbrocks67]

I've seen more signs for Charlie Gerow in my area of Montco than any of the other candidates which is so funny to me since he's polling so low.

Have seen a few Dave White signs as well, way less than Gerow but more than Barletta/Mastriano.

There's been some Barletta signs but only on the highways.

I've maybe seen a couple Mastriano but not really a whole lot.

[wbrocks67]

My theory on why Trump won't endorse:

• Doesn't like Mastriano since he voted for the voter ID legislation in 2020
• Thinks Barletta is a loser for losing to Bob Casey in 2018 by double digits in what could've been a perfectly winnable race in Trump's eyes
• White is polling too low for Trump to endorse in order to protect his endorsement record

And with Mastriano now at a 10 point lead over Barletta in the Trafalgar poll, I think it's safe to say that as of now, Mastriano is the clear favorite for the nomination.

Agree with all of this.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/sdemarcoii/status/1524041040671526912

[wbrocks67]

Problem for Barletta is Corman was polling at like 3-5%. It will give him a tiny boost but nowhere near enough. Barletta needs someone like McSwain or White to do the same.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/JonathanTamari/status/1524743531557965825

[wbrocks67]

Trump says on Truth Social he's endorsing in this race "soon" but at this point, it won't even matter. We're down to 4 days before the election.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1524753652891762689

[wbrocks67]

The margins in the suburbs for a Shapiro v Mastriano are going to be very interesting.

[wbrocks67]

The margins in the suburbs for a Shapiro v Mastriano are going to be very interesting.

Inflation and the poor economy will be enough imo to pull Doug Mastriano over the finish line by about 2%. He will be crushed in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs, but will get North Korea style margins in the rural areas that will be enough to overcome suburban losses.

Maybe if Shapiro was a generic D, but he's had a history of overperforming in areas like Luzerne where Ds have collapsed in recent years, so I wouldn't be so sure.

[wbrocks67]

This forum is really going to delude itself with this race. I will enjoy your conventional wisdom punditry getting smashed to pieces in November.

Why so? Do you think candidate candidate is totally irrelevant here and the red wave is just big enough to carry any far-right lunatic over the finishline in a state that Biden won?

PA already elected a Dem gov in D-midterm as recent as eight years ago.

I'm not saying Mastriano will win. But this idea that he's a "far-right lunatic" as you describe him is entirely subjective, and candidate quality is being decided by partisan liberals such as yourself thinking you can neutrally analyze candidates. And this is why you guys keep getting elections so wrong.

It's not subjective. He is. And it's not just partisan liberals. There are people from both sides of the aisle and all over PA who have said as such.

[wbrocks67]

This forum is really going to delude itself with this race. I will enjoy your conventional wisdom punditry getting smashed to pieces in November.

Why so? Do you think candidate candidate is totally irrelevant here and the red wave is just big enough to carry any far-right lunatic over the finishline in a state that Biden won?

PA already elected a Dem gov in D-midterm as recent as eight years ago.

I'm not saying Mastriano will win. But this idea that he's a "far-right lunatic" as you describe him is entirely subjective, and candidate quality is being decided by partisan liberals such as yourself thinking you can neutrally analyze candidates. And this is why you guys keep getting elections so wrong.

This guy is an outspoken election denialist, helped organize the January 6th protest against the counting of the electoral college, and there’s literal footage of him crossing the police barricades after they were breached by the protestors. Do you think if a Democrat wins this state in 2024, he’s going to be fine with sending Democratic electors to the convening of the electoral college? Do you think he’s not going to try to passing laws that make it harder for would-be democratic voters to vote? This guy is a real threat to the very threads that hold our democracy together.

I say that as someone who thinks that he’s favored to win this race by at least a couple of points. Yes, Democrats have used January 6 to motivate their voters and many have (wrongly) associated those who participated in the riot with the broader Republican electorate. But the republican establishment has refused to expel or at the very least condemn politicians like Mastriano, who have no hesitation to use election denialism to their political advantage. And the Republican electorate, much like the democratic one, still takes cues from their respective establishment. As a result, someone like Mastriano is now a perfectly acceptable, standard Republican candidate. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a radical.

The Republican establishment is pretty clearly against Mastriano and were clearly trying to stop him. And all reliable sources indicate that Mastriano loses badly to Shapiro and underperform other Republicans significantly.

Simply saying that Mastriano wasn’t going to be a strong candidate in the general election obviously wasn’t enough to stop him. The establishment should have gone after him harder and called him out for who is: a threat to mutual toleration and someone who disrespects the electoral process, two things that are important to the continual existence of democracy in this country. But they failed to do that.

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you. It is very unlikely that Democrats win an open race like this in a national environment that favors republicans. Especially in this era of polarization where split ticket voting is uncommon. If the Republican establishment were truly against Mastriano at this point, then we would see multiple high profile Republican endorsements of Shapiro. But that hasn’t happened yet and likely never will. You would have to be living in a left wing media bubble to believe that Shapiro is somehow the favorite here.

And you clearly don't live in PA either to understand the dynamics.

This isn't complicated. This is a red year of course, but Shapiro is a very strong candidate while Mastriano is the worst possible, objectively, candidate the GOP could've nominated. Red year could sweep him in, but he was absolutely the GOPs worst shot here and to act as if Mastriano is somehow favored is is also living in your own bubble.

[wbrocks67]

When are Atlas posters going to realize “election denialism” is a mainstream view?

It's not that it's mainstream necessarily (although it is when you count all forms of election denialism), it's just not an important thing that most people actually care enough to vote based solely on, to the detriment of every Wikipedia entry and news article. Liberals have made this their obsession because it makes Republicans look bad, as simple as that. If we had a conservative media, we would have articles of Democrats that would highlight that they implied Russian collusion in 2016, or downplayed BLM riots, as their go-to passive aggressive smears. But we have a liberal media, clearly, and they won't ever give up talking about this or vastly overestimating how much people care about it.

Not sure why you're acting like this is just liberals freaking out over nothing when the Republican nominee for the Governor has explicitly endorsed this conspiracy theory.

The issue is that 'election denialism' is not arguably a particularly damaging thing among swing/nonpartisan voters. It won't damage as much as a sex-scandal, white nationalism, advocating for cuts to social security, et cetera - if at all. For swing/nonpartisan voters who are leaning R right now, such talk will be met with "ok, so? I think the Republicans will do more to fix the economy".

Unfortunately

That's... not true. And not just that, but Mastriano has explicitly said that he would've essentially thrown out the votes in 2020. Telling people in your own state that their votes didn't matter and you would overrule them goes even way beyond his whole 2020 denialism thing.

This is kind of like Wagner all over again but on steroids. There's a reason why Tom Wolf won by 18 in 2018. It was a blue wave and Wolf has/had a strong personal brand, but also Wagner was a *terrible* candidate to boot, especially for Pennsylvania.

[wbrocks67]

IF Mastriano runs on the economy and Shapiro runs on "muh January 6th", then Mastriano will likely win. It doesn't matter how extreme he is.

See, these types of responses make no sense to me bc its clear you haven't been paying attention to this race at all.

[wbrocks67]

IF Mastriano runs on the economy and Shapiro runs on "muh January 6th", then Mastriano will likely win. It doesn't matter how extreme he is.

See, these types of responses make no sense to me bc its clear you haven't been paying attention to this race at all.

People outside of PA commenting on this race just shows how little attention they pay. The comment in another thread trying to compare this race to VA-Gov was silly as well. It's abundantly clear that there is no parallel for this race because Mastriano IS crazier than even your standard Trumpist Republicans. But simultaneously, Shapiro IS running a better campaign and has demonstrated stronger electoral appeal than most standard Democrats. Pennsylvania does not adhere to trends. We do what we do.

This is basically what I try and say when people think just because its a red year that Oz would win by 3-5% or something.

And then I bring up the fact that last years Supreme Court race was within 1% even when Bidens approvals were in the tank.

Like you said, PA is just a different beast.

[wbrocks67]

I would be totally cool with Lamb running for AG in '24. But I wonder if Larry Krasner might run against him.

IDK, I don't think Krasner would do well statewide. He has a super liberal base but I don't know how we would do a in general statewide. Lamb seems much more suited for that.

[wbrocks67]

I feel like people should look into the Northampton County Executive race from last fall. Reminder that this is a critical swing county located in this very state.

Republican candidate Steve Lynch was a Stop the Steal believer who was at the rally on January 6 and wanted to send armed men to intimidate school boards. Pretty similar to Mastriano.

The incumbent Democrat, Lamont McClure, was reelected by over 12 points in the same county that Biden carried by less than 1. On the same night that Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy underperformed Biden's 2020 performance in their states by double digits.

I normally wouldn't read too much into something like this, but again, this is one of the swingiest counties in the exact same state.

Lynch also ran a fairly absurd campaign. Mastriano could do the same, but Democrats automatically assuming he will are wishcasting.

Uh, that seems like a fair assumption after his acceptance speech.

This. I feel like I'm reliving CNN election night from last week where someone suggested that Mastriano may "moderate" his campaign and then they played his election night speech and it was everything you'd expect from the Mastriano we'd known and you just wonder how people can be this dense.

[wbrocks67]

I feel like people should look into the Northampton County Executive race from last fall. Reminder that this is a critical swing county located in this very state.

Republican candidate Steve Lynch was a Stop the Steal believer who was at the rally on January 6 and wanted to send armed men to intimidate school boards. Pretty similar to Mastriano.

The incumbent Democrat, Lamont McClure, was reelected by over 12 points in the same county that Biden carried by less than 1. On the same night that Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy underperformed Biden's 2020 performance in their states by double digits.

I normally wouldn't read too much into something like this, but again, this is one of the swingiest counties in the exact same state.

I honestly think the bigger threat to Dems will be turnout crashing in the bluest cores of the state. If everyone who showed up in 2020 revoted for Gov, then I think Shapiro would be a pretty clear favorite to win, however, turnout dynamics will def favour Rs.

This is why I think Mastriano is favored many people in blue areas can't be bothered to vote every year.

Not sure how this works since college+ whites have historically been the ones to come out, even in off year elections, and those voters are more than ever in vote-rich areas like Allegheny and SEPA.

[wbrocks67]

I feel like people should look into the Northampton County Executive race from last fall. Reminder that this is a critical swing county located in this very state.

Republican candidate Steve Lynch was a Stop the Steal believer who was at the rally on January 6 and wanted to send armed men to intimidate school boards. Pretty similar to Mastriano.

The incumbent Democrat, Lamont McClure, was reelected by over 12 points in the same county that Biden carried by less than 1. On the same night that Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy underperformed Biden's 2020 performance in their states by double digits.

I normally wouldn't read too much into something like this, but again, this is one of the swingiest counties in the exact same state.

I honestly think the bigger threat to Dems will be turnout crashing in the bluest cores of the state. If everyone who showed up in 2020 revoted for Gov, then I think Shapiro would be a pretty clear favorite to win, however, turnout dynamics will def favour Rs.

This is why I think Mastriano is favored many people in blue areas can't be bothered to vote every year.

Not sure how this works since college+ whites have historically been the ones to come out, even in off year elections, and those voters are more than ever in vote-rich areas like Allegheny and SEPA.

Uh the Philly black vote maybe?

Philly turnout was decent all things considered last year, so I don't imagine it would be lower for a legit midterm race.

[wbrocks67]

We're a week out from the primary and still no GE polls. Insanity.

[wbrocks67]

Perfect point of total self-destruction by the GOP. 

The PA GOP has been a mess for years now. I mean, the top candidates have been Mastriano, Parnell, Wagner, Barletta, etc. They aren't sending their best.

[wbrocks67]

This poll conducted for Future Majority & America’s Future Majority shows Shapiro beating Mastriano by 43 points with Hispanic voters.

https://futuremajority.org/wp-content/uploads/Future-Majority-Polling-Report-Latino-Voters-in-Arizona-Nevada-and-Pennsylvania.pdf

Shapiro +43 would be better than everyone except for Hillary, though that was a bit of anomaly since she was extremely strong with Latinos across the board (or rather that, combined with Trump's weakness as well)

2020: Biden +42
2018 GOV: Wolf +36
2018 SEN: Casey +38
2016: Clinton +52

[wbrocks67]

Will people finally stop acting as if Mastriano is *not* some type of albatross around the GOP? Yes, he's so generic R isn't he?!!

https://twitter.com/kirk_bado/status/1532311769460400130