PA GOV 2022: Stick a fork in it

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1574798573455171586

[wbrocks67]

The hits keep coming

https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status/1574794507274653697

[wbrocks67]

Mastriano raised $3.2M in the same time frame as Shapiro's $25.4M.

$1M of that $3.2M was from one conservative rich couple in Chicago

[wbrocks67]

I will also stop short of saying safe D, but even accounting for Mastriano getting all the GOP base support to turn out for him as possible and GOP favoring polling errors, Shapiro still seems ahead by too much and with too many factors that make him favored to win. No Republican should be losing the Fraternal Order of Police endorsement. I am more convinced that it could even be a relative blowout in the low teens at this point too. Mastriano seems to have basically given up unlike Oz and Trump in 2020.

Well Oz can't really give up. He doesn't have a choice.

[wbrocks67]

Wow. The only PAC that was airing anti-Shapiro ads all summer/into the fall has now bowed out.

https://twitter.com/PhillyInquirer/status/1575908358925828111

[wbrocks67]

So with the extreme divergence in both major statewide Pennsylvania races, with this one looking increasingly like a lock for Shapiro and Oz making a comeback in the Senate race, what can Shapiro do to help Fetterman? He might as well focus his efforts there as well as in trying to get a Democratic legislature now that Mastriano is close to dead in the water. I get not wanting to be complacent but this is getting into "stop! He's already dead!" territory and the resources that may go into beating him further into the ground could be utilized better elsewhere.

Oz and Mastriano are generally only about 1-2% difference in most polls, so Fetterman just has to lock in more of the Shapiro/undecided voters. I think it would help if the two at least did 1 or 2 events together just to show the average voter that they're in line with each other.

[wbrocks67]

Yeah. As I mentioned before, it might help Fetterman similar to how Tammy Baldwin arguably pulled Evers over the line.

I think it’s usually thought that the governor race does the pulling. It holds the top position on the ballot, so it informs the subsequent choices. Shapiro might pull Fetterman over the line, but I don’t think Baldwin pulled Evers over the line. Walker was very decisive in a neutral state in a wave year. I think his performance was actually quite good in retrospect.

Either way, the gap between Fetterman and Shapiro will be overestimated by the pols. Whether that means Shapiro does worse or Fetterman does better will determine the Senate race.

Given recent history, I wouldn't be surprised if it means Shapiro does worse. By "worse", that would mean he would win by "only" 6% or so, while Fetterman defeats Oz by 2% or so.

Yeah, I don't think there is going to be a huge disparity in the end. Shapiro will outperform Fetterman simply bc some Republicans who usually go full GOP will even abandon Mastriano (never gettable for Fetterman though), but I don't think there will be as many "swingy" Shapiro/Oz voters as people think. Most people will come home to their respective sides.

[wbrocks67]

Given the trajectory of this race, you wonder who Shapiro may want/appoint as AG in his place. Would think Conor Lamb, especially with prosecutorial background, is the top choice.

[wbrocks67]

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.

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.

Well this aged poorly. I didn’t expect national Republicans to abandon Mastriano so fast and for there to be such a substantial gap in support between Oz and Mastriano. There’s barely enough time between now and Election Day to close the gap and this race is increasingly looking like a missed opportunity. It goes to show that while outsider rhetoric/public perception can matter in a Republican primary where you don’t need a lot of votes to win and can matter slightly in a general election, the true elephant in the room (no pun intended) is wether the party machine is working behind you.

It speaks to the priorities of the Republican Party when one candidate has been on Fox News almost everyday for the past few weeks and the other one hasn’t.

Do you mean party backing or in polls? Because the poll support is kind of overstated. Oz has only been running a few pts ahead of Mastriano's vote share.

[wbrocks67]

Doug has finally found a few bucks to get on TV

edit: the buy is $21K lol

https://twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1576957083685199874

[wbrocks67]

umichvoter reporting on Twitter that Suffolk tomorrow will show Shapiro +11, 48-37.

They had Shapiro +4, 44-40 in June

[wbrocks67]

In my opinion, Shapiro's floor is a victory margin of 4 points, and his ceiling is anywhere between 9 and 12.

Given polarization, I'm thinking Shapiro by about 4 seems most likely. It's unfortunate but remember Biden only won PA by a point against Trump in 2020, who isn't Mastriano levels of crazy but getting close.

Trump had an actual campaign infrastructure though. Also Shapiro outran Biden by four points. A high single digit margin is definitely plausible. I'm cautious about it ending up in the low teens, but this is not entirely equivalent to a presidential election.

The Senate election will likely track closer to 2020.

I do wonder if Mastriano is helping Oz in a backhanded sense that Mastriano being so crazy makes Oz look more normal and sane. I also feel like there's a bit of a simillar dynamic in Georgia; prior to 2020 Kemp was seem as pretty far right for Georgia but after he refused to give in to the big lie he's been hailed as some moderate hero and often compared to Walker, who is well... idk.

This can go both ways though, the fact that Mastriano has no campaign infrastructure and no money hurts Oz then because he has to do more heavy lifting to get people to turn out. There's also the nature of them both being on the same ticket, which still links Oz to Mastriano.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/AllAboutPA/status/1579144723318865920

[wbrocks67]

Obviously DelRosso is not going to throw Mastriano under the bus, but it is interesting to see how she's gone full MAGA at this point

https://twitter.com/jjabbott/status/1579438059309105152

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/AllAboutPA/status/1582374260508545029

[wbrocks67]

Oh FFS

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583201646229999616

[wbrocks67]

This is like the 5th literal time Mastriano has been caught using Russian footage.

https://twitter.com/SkyeJetFL/status/1584530207934816256

[wbrocks67]

Obama has apparently cut a TV ad for Shapiro.

[wbrocks67]

OMG guys we have another pro-Mastriano ad sighting! This one was a pre-Youtube-roll ad that I saw as I was getting ready to do my module during a rare intern-from-home week. It's the second one I've seen overall and the first one that features Mastriano himself.  

It was his usual brand of "keeping girls out of the boys' bathrooms" and resisting draconian mask mandates, but a week before election day: he finally did the thing.  Only thing missing from the bingo card is an anti-Shapiro ad.  Have not seen a single one of those.  

Yeah, once Jeff Yass dropped out (Commonwealth Leadership Fund I think was his group), it seemed that that was the end of the only anti-Shapiro ads on the airwaves.

[wbrocks67]

In case you thought DelRosso was any better than Mastriano:

https://twitter.com/jjabbott/status/1587806934002012169

[wbrocks67]

Yeah, Shapiro's speech yesterday was incredible. Even moreso in person. I fully expect he'll run for prez one day.

[wbrocks67]

Guy drops one good speech and suddenly he's future president material. Get a grip people, this kind of attitude led to the clown car 2020 primary.

He's been "dropping good speeches" for a while now. Just because you haven't been paying attention doesn't mean the people who have been paying attention are wrong.

I always love when people who don't live in PA try to tell us about Shapiro. Just because y'all just learned about him five seconds ago doesn't mean that the rest of us did. We've known for a while how great he is, and how for some reason people outside of PA keep wanting to underestimate him.

[wbrocks67]

Very curious to see the margins for Shapiro in the Philly burbs, if they potentially reach Wolf/Casey margins or are more like Bidens.

[wbrocks67]

I'm not gonna lie, I did have like a small worry that somehow the polls would be wrong-ish again and not get a secret Mastriano vote. VERY happy to see that that was wrong and the good people of PA rightfully rejected it.

Also some people didn't take seriously that Shapiro could do a Tom Wolf 2014/2018 type victory, and look where we are. Looks like he'll be right in the middle-ish of those two (+14/15)

[wbrocks67]

And…it looks like with mail ballots that Shapiro has flipped Beaver County to his column. An exact replica of the 2018 gubernatorial map. Who woulda thunk!?

Not too surprising, given Wolf and Shapiro both very strong candidates and Mastriano and Wagner both horrific. The fact that Shapiro did it in a non-blue wave year though is even more impressive imo (and with Mastriano even being worse than Wagner)