Which was a bigger factor in PA-SEN?

[wbrocks67]

I'm also rather surprised that painting Oz as "extreme" actually worked. He was of course awful on issues like abortion and the 2020 election, but 50% of voters said he was extreme (47% no), while only 44% said the same of Fetterman.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I posted a tweet earlier that points out that Fetterman did a campaign strategy that Democrats rarely do. Most of the time the message is "My opponent is an honorable person whose views I just disagree with and wouldn't be best for the country...", Fetterman wasn't like that at all, he just attacked Oz to the core, his whole message was basically "F[inks] this guy, this guy is really awful" and never let up. He even did some campaign stops where he told people essentially "You might not agree with all of my views but still look at how much of a f[inks]ing disaster my sh!thead opponent would be" and it apparently worked.

Whether that speaks more to Fetterman's strengths or Oz's weaknesses is up for debate, but it's worth noting.

[pppolitics]

The question doesn't really make any sense.

A candidate's weakness doesn't matter if his opponent can't exploit it.

Fetterman was able to exploit Oz's weakness in a way that few others can.

https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1552314977784143877
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1547683652791717891
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1552324950773710848
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1545100119456071681
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1550211995026194432
https://twitter.com/johnfetterman/status/1546228363760656386

[Lechasseur]

Fetterman's not a strong candidate, it was clearly Oz's weakness the bigger factor out of these two.

However I think the biggest factor was left out here: the Shapiro vs Mastriano race for governor.

There was a lot of ballot splitting clearly, given the difference in margins between the governor's race and the Senate race.

Had Shapiro not been a uniquely strong candidate and/or the GOP ran a better candidate than Mastriano (who was an unusually poor candidate), Oz would likely have won the Senate race. If anything, it was Shapiro that carried Fetterman. It would have taken an exceptionally strong Republican candidate to be able to overcome the enormous margin for Democrats that Shapiro had.

[Lechasseur]

Not denying that Fetterman has strengths, but Oz's weaknesses were hands down the bigger factor. Toomey or McCormick probably would have won this race, or at least made it a lot closer. Oz was effectively branded a sleazy elitist carpetbagger early on and never really lost that image. (It was actually reminiscent of Romney 2012.) Despite easily beating a debilitated Fetterman in a debate (and Romney beat Obama badly in the first debate too, come to think of it). This loss is all on Trump.

Toomey, sure. McCormick has even more of that Romney type energy than Oz and is much less telegenic to boot; I think Fetterman would have been able to define him similarly.

Yeah, like I said in the post above, imo only Toomey could have overcome Shapiro's margin in the governor's race to keep the Senate seat in GOP hands.

[cg41386]

Oz. I think Fetterman was basically an average candidate, and Oz was an unusually poor one. Given the margin and the strong overall Democratic performance in PA, basically any reasonable candidate (Lamb, Arkoosh, etc.) probably would have beaten Oz, and I think Shapiro probably would have done a little better than Fetterman had he run for Senate instead of governor.

Fetterman's campaign did do a nice job of negatively defining Oz, though. I'll also say that I'm speaking as someone from SEPA, where Fetterman appears to have done worst as compared to Biden. I could imagine Lamb doing better in the SEPA suburbs but worse in rural areas.

Not really true:

Philly: Biden +63.4 > Fetterman +66.4
Montco: Biden +26.3 > Fetterman +28.0
Delaware: Biden +26.8 > Fetterman +27.7
Chester: Biden +17.1 > Fetterman +16.6
Bucks: Biden +4.5 > Fetterman +7.1

Only place he's down a smidge is Chester, who still has some remaining VBMs to count. The fact that Fetterman is even topping Biden's performance in SEPA is pretty stunning, given a lot of us expected him to underperform Biden slightly given how toxic Trump was in SEPA and how we weren't sure if Oz would have at least a tiny bit more suburban appeal. The fact that Oz did even *worse* than Trump in SEPA is noteworthy. Speaks to Fetterman's strengths AND Oz's weaknesses imo.

Wow at the Bucks overperformance. I thought Fetterman would have some issues there, he clearly didn't.

[wbrocks67]

Fetterman's not a strong candidate, it was clearly Oz's weakness the bigger factor out of these two.

However I think the biggest factor was left out here: the Shapiro vs Mastriano race for governor.

There was a lot of ballot splitting clearly, given the difference in margins between the governor's race and the Senate race.

Had Shapiro not been a uniquely strong candidate and/or the GOP ran a better candidate than Mastriano (who was an unusually poor candidate), Oz would likely have won the Senate race. If anything, it was Shapiro that carried Fetterman. It would have taken an exceptionally strong Republican candidate to be able to overcome the enormous margin for Democrats that Shapiro had.

You're leaving out a lot of things that are outside of the GOV race. Just look at the exit polls. Oz was both more extreme than Fetterman and voters cared *a lot* about his New Jersey residence. People really bending themselves into pretzels trying to not give Fetterman any credit here.