MD-SEN 2024: Cardin retiring, Hogan IN

[wbrocks67]

Trone officially in:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/04/total-wine-trone-maryland-senate-campaign-00095218?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014c-2414-d9dd-a5ec-34bc650e0000&nlid=630318

Eh, he'd be fine but it'd be nice not to have another older white guy in the seat.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/EricCortellessa/status/1655618032092295187

[wbrocks67]

It's beyond over for Trone lol

https://twitter.com/DanielleEGaines/status/1691436523114119170

[wbrocks67]

Trone should just drop out at this point, it isn't happening. Is it too late for him to go back to MD-06?

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1755991741516128724

[wbrocks67]

He's also now saying he won't vote for Biden or Trump.

https://twitter.com/DavidABergstein/status/1765740766767239211?s=20

[wbrocks67]

I think she's got this.

https://twitter.com/SydneyKashiwagi/status/1772266894076096760

[wbrocks67]

Trone has already spent millions and he was only up 7 in the Wapo poll, which seems pretty bad for him. Alsobrooks though needs to start spending and really start to narrow the gap.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/DavidCayJ/status/1774250579243512140?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Yeah, imagine this will come back to haunt him in a big way.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/kirk_bado/status/1783465686821376201

[wbrocks67]

Alsobrooks would make this legitimately competitive tbh

She’d still be the favorite and the national party would probably carry her to victory in the end, but Trone would make holding the seat so much easier.

I don't see any reason to believe she'd be a weaker candidate than Trone.

I mean I’d say the polling paint a pretty clear picture. Feels like this race is one of the clearest examples I’ve yet seen of the “progressive is more electable” truism you see thrown about

I think polling is mostly a consequence of Alsobrooks having lower name recognition.

Yeah, anyone making assumptions right now as to whether Trone or Alsobrooks would be better is just kinda dumb. They'd both perform similarly.

[wbrocks67]

Alsobrooks would make this legitimately competitive tbh

She’d still be the favorite and the national party would probably carry her to victory in the end, but Trone would make holding the seat so much easier.

I don't see any reason to believe she'd be a weaker candidate than Trone.

Polling is crystal clear on this one, sorry. Trone is clearly the stronger candidate.

Doesn’t mean she’ll lose. If this were a normal candidate and senate race in Maryland then I’d say the Dem establishment should have carte blanche to endorse who they like. However, given that the GOP nominee is polling 15+ points ahead at this moment, endorsing the weaker candidate seems like an extravagance that Dems might regret come November (might, not will).

Polling does nothing of the sort to prove this. Trone has outspent Alsobrooks like 15:1 at this point, and the average of polls doesn't have him that far ahead. If anything, that speaks to him not being the stronger candidate, since you'd think he'd have a bigger lead. A lot of this is also simply name rec.

[wbrocks67]

Interesting that Trone has gone negative in his latest ad. Something tells me he's not up 30% like that Wapo poll had him

[wbrocks67]

I've stayed quiet about this race as I'm heavily involved in it personally and professionally - my partner and I are personal friends with Angela Alsobrooks and I've polled it at multiple different points this cycle for multiple different clients - but I do think the media/online perception of this primary is drastically different from the way it's actually playing out.

A lot of this is because of the behind-the-scenes stuff going on - there's a ton of interpersonal politics and rivalries at play here, and things being taken into consideration by national party folks that don't usually factor into races like this, and for this reason it's probably going to get very ugly very quickly in these final weeks.

Alsobrooks is a real knife-fighter, her 2018 PG County executive campaign against Donna Edwards was vicious and very effective. She may not be able to get as aggressive in a higher-profile, statewide race and may need to outsource a lot of the dirtier work to allies/outside groups, but this race probably looks very different tonally by election day.

Are you allowed to say whether there's been a shift in the polling on the race over the duration of the campaign?