PA-SN 2022 megathread: Shrek vs. The Wizard of Oz

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Ughhh no run for Governor
We need Shapiro for Senate

Hasn’t the assumption for quite a while been that they’re going to split the offices the other way?

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Anyway, this is going to have about as much effect as the Joe Biden racism attacks. Especially since it's the exact same people (#KHive et. al.) doing it.

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congratulations Senator Oz

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I think the people here moaning either about Kenyatta or about the 'other great candidates who didn't run' are the most delusional of all. For those of you who have forgotten - Democrats from SEPA DO NOT WIN. Again and again the party has tried throwing these candidates at the electorate and again and again they've failed. The rest of the state hates them. Every Democratic win statewide has come from someone from another part of the state. The closest thing to a SEPA Democrat to win the state top-ticket since Rendell was Biden, and he also emphasizes his Scranton tie more than anything.


There are arguments as to whether Lamb or Fetterman is the better candidate. I've been disappointed in Fetterman thus far - he seemed to put more effort in his Lt Gov race in 2018 than this race! - but it's still very early. If he ramps things up now we've seen before that he can be a decently complelling candidate. If nothing else, we ought to remind ourself what most of this forum was saying about Warnock throwing away his race by not campaigning - and that was much much closer to the election than this is.

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https://twitter.com/EliStokols/status/1559902444427120640

wait...lead the Commonwealth? Is he aware of what position he's running for?

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Most of the above reasons are (at least to a degree) correct, but I will also note that it feels like we’ve had more (real) pollsters poll PA in recent months? Could be wrong about that but it seems firms have decided this race is the most eye-catching to the public.

Other races have also shown Republican senate candidates doing…pretty badly but the polls saying this are (generally) less reputable and there are fewer of them, making it easier to discount them.

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For the last two weeks now literally every poll (with the exception of the one Marist one) has been showing between Fetterman +2 and Fetterman +5; and there have been a *lot* of them. Don't necessarily know what this would indicate if anything but I suspect a few of the more recent ones are herding at least a little bit to the range.

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Saw that Oz/NRSC will launch a series of ads highlighting Fetterman's assault of a black man,

They need to be careful this doesn’t backfire and earn Fetterman support from the Republican base voters in PA.

Yeah this seems a little dangerous when it actively contravenes the primary narrative that has been used to attack Fetterman as of late.

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Those in PA: What exactly have Fetterman's camp et al been running on the airwaves?  Political news has jumped between a bunch of stuff over the last few weeks; what's the narrative the actual campaign is going with?

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Uh...where did all the pollsters go lol? Couple weeks back everyone with a phone and a few free hours was polling this race. Now it's been a whole week since the last polls (from Monmouth and CenterStreet).

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https://twitter.com/YAppelbaum/status/1581632052394221569

Journalist is FASCINATED that not everyone thinks sick or disabled people are worthless like he does.

Are we really making half of the midterm a referendum on the value of women, children, animals and the disabled?

half?

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I don’t really trust the febreze poll - in theory Fetterman has been holding this 2 point lead and around 47-48 in the more R-leaning polls; but I also kind of feel like this could be a “hide behind Trafalgar” type thing here. Would like to see more (ideally from the outlets that have been polling this race.

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I don’t really trust the febreze poll - in theory Fetterman has been holding this 2 point lead and around 47-48 in the more R-leaning polls; but I also kind of feel like this could be a “hide behind Trafalgar” type thing here. Would like to see more (ideally from the outlets that have been polling this race.

Fabrizio on its own is R affiliated, Fabrizio/Impact is a joint effort with Impact, which is D affliated. They have been coming in right around the polling average this cycle, with Kelly +8 in Early September , Warnock +3 in July, Masto +1 in late August.

Does this combined effort have much of a track record, though? Those results all seem plausible but then being consistently in the center of the polling average could mean that they’re just a very average poll or it could mean they herd fairly actively. The lack of consistent pollling on any single race also means we get less information from them bc no movement.

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Should note that the 538 average does not include Monmouth from two weeks ago either, which was essentially 48-43, lining up with Suffolk.

Hopefully we get at least a Fox poll tomorrow or Thursday.

538 does not include Monmouth because Monmouth did not poll the race. They publicly do not present their numbers as a topline; it would be incorrect to tabulate them as such.

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The abortion line was pretty stupid in a state like Pennsylvania. Obviously Roe isn't going to be the only issue in the election, but saying abortion should be "between a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders" is very stupid. Got to imagine that gem ends up in some late ads.

Ultimately that will determine who “won” the debate. Who can make the most ads from it. There’s enough material for the Fetterman campaign for the next 13 days.

Exactly. Unless I'm badly mistaken, basically nobody watches non-Presidential debates live. They are mostly important as a mine for opposition ads in the event of a candidate ing up. Plenty of material after today. I don't think anyone will deny that Oz won the debate, but he may not have done enough to actually win this race given his own issues.

I don't think this is completely true...the tone that the news runs with it in the morning will filter a lot further out than viewers of the debate itself. You can argue, of course, that said narrative would've been negative for Fetterman no matter how the debate went, but still, anecdotes that don't look good can go a long way.

Being able to take good clips from it does help counter this in the long run, of course. Two weeks left is not a huge amount of time but it isn't nothing either. That being said, just because a good clip exists doesn't mean it's going to be effective. Fetterman's campaign has work to do if they want to present it effectively.

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Hot take but this debate will change nothing and people will forget about it by election day as with pretty much every other debate in the last 6 years.

Not that hot of a take (and I agree). I'm a bit shocked this debate is generating so much attention.

No baseball.

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Oz' answer kind of betrays that he is pro-choice in his heart but he needs to run as a quasi-abortion restrictionist, so he squares the circle with a moderate stance that he hopes won't offend a huge segment of voters.

This is my belief as well, and this is why I believe Oz will be a Generic, Establishment R if he wins. The man was pro-choice for most of his career, and only pivoted rightwards when he ran for political office. He's not going to be an extremist on this issue, and apparently indicated that he wouldn't support a national abortion ban. He was basically stating the primary argument that Dobbs made - to leave the decision to every state.

Except that in this case the comment is much dumber. Firstly, of course, Dobbs was a court decision to allow the legislature free rein on the issue. Oz is running for a legislative position; people will want him to match their values.

Pro-choice people obviously won’t like his answer - but neither will genuinely pro-life voters? Oz’s implicit admission here is that he does not believe a fetus is a person or that they should be given any stake over the decision to - from a pro-life perspective- end their life. So pretty much everyone is going to be turned off by the approach he took in some way. Even those who genuinely believe in ‘let the states decide’ generally take this view out of some idea of democracy; that the people in each state or locality should decide. And if Oz had said something along those lines, fine. But most people don’t even know who their “local politicians” are; so from that point of view Oz has just left the decision up to some faceless bureaucrats. Not exactly reassuring!

I’m not as convinced it’s guaranteed to be a slam dunk ad as some in here are. But it’s objectively a pretty terrible statement.

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I know newspaper endorsements probably don't matter that much, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has endorsed Oz: https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2022/10/30/pennsylvania-senate-endorsement-mehmet-oz-john-fetterman/stories/202210210102

I think they lean slightly to the right, but FWIW, they did endorse Shapiro.

‘Lean slightly to the right’ is an understatement - since 2018 they’ve been run by the (vehemently pro-Trump) editorial board of The Blade in Toledo; endorsed Trump in 2020 and are one of the most right-wing papers in the country.

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https://twitter.com/politics_polls/status/1587031682422644736?s=46&t=9EMTBE_...
It looks like the attacks backfired

Per the article, most of this was pre-debate. We have yet to see a fully post-debate poll. (Although I suspect the results wouldn't be all that different.)

Given the narrative on the debate that sort of went from a bit of panic that night/next day to then a bit of backfiring on the GOP/Oz's comments after that, I would assume likely that the next day would be the "worst" for Fetterman per se, so if he was still leading by a few points in Wednesdays sample (per the article), then I'd say that's pretty damn good for him.

…taking any conclusions from that kind of sub sample is a very bad idea.

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https://twitter.com/jonathantamari/status/1587826653375479810?s=46&t=sTDo_YQ...

3% is actually...not low in a vacuum...but that's assuming that respondents are actually being truthful about this. Generally one can easily argue that most/all of those people were already voting Oz/R-leaning undecideds who were going to come home to him regardless. But if even 20% of that number genuinely had a change in their position it could make a difference in this kind of race.