PA state senate: Oz vs. Fetterman

[Franklin]

This election seems to represent a significant blueward shift in PA which is the opposite of neighboring Ohio.

Fetterman did better than Biden in every single county in the state. And the blue shift was actually largest in the most rural parts of the state, not the urban and suburban counties around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. This is how the vote in each county shifted from 2020 to 2022.

Can you link to the source of this? I am curious to see it.

[Ken]

This election seems to represent a significant blueward shift in PA which is the opposite of neighboring Ohio.

Fetterman did better than Biden in every single county in the state. And the blue shift was actually largest in the most rural parts of the state, not the urban and suburban counties around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. This is how the vote in each county shifted from 2020 to 2022.

Can you link to the source of this? I am curious to see it.

New York Times does it for every one of the Governor and Senate races. Here is the page where I picked up that map:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... enate.html

Here is what the map looked like in neighboring Ohio for Vance: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... enate.html

He did worse than Trump in just about every single county in Ohio. By contrast if you zoom down to Florida you can find that DeSantis did substantially better than Trump in every part of Florida.

[Ken]

And the Mastriano result which was not remotely close. He still loses soundly without a single vote from Philly or Pittsburgh.

[Josh]

Well, that should put the nail in the coffin for the idea Republicans need to run “moderate”, “reasonable” candidates like Mehmet Oz.

Meanwhile a J.D. Vance wins easily.

[temporal1]

Well, that should put the nail in the coffin for the idea Republicans need to run “moderate”, “reasonable” candidates like Mehmet Oz.

Meanwhile a J.D. Vance wins easily.

In Illinois, 2015-19, we had Republican Gov Rauner, ‘way more than moderate, reasonable, well-educated, well-spoken, married man of one wife - the man routinely voted WITH Chicago Dems, their dream come true, right? - NOPE.

In Illinois, just as then witnessed with DJT, he was relentlessly hounded by the Chicago DNC and Chicago DNC media (i don’t believe Illinois has media not controlled by Chicago). He was out after one term. Ugly is in with no plans of change. i refer to Illinois as The State of Chicago. i hope others will get the warning/message.

i choke when i read about “Republicans need better leadership.”

Anyone thinking Dems would tolerate ANY not of their choosing+grooming has not been paying attention.
They have a winning playbook, THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS, they’re not letting it go.

The electorate is responsible for seeing through it. So far, not impressive!

Frankly, i believe DJT, rough as he is, opened doors for MANY quite good, vital, conservatives to follow. For me, this was his most important accomplishment. Give credit where credit is due. Mitt Romney did no such thing.

No matter, i pray those that follow are not lured into the D gutter. i think of it as having a “deep bench.”
libs don’t have that. behind the current old+awful, is worse.

Conservative females stand out (to me). i prefer men leading!
For years, i’ve witnessed numerous conservative women demonstrate competence and efficiency without sacrificing self-respect, grace, without employing/resorting to coarseness, profanity, anger, bitterness, greed. i hope they don’t lose their footing.

[Ken]

Well, that should put the nail in the coffin for the idea Republicans need to run “moderate”, “reasonable” candidates like Mehmet Oz.

Meanwhile a J.D. Vance wins easily.

Most people who are not ideological partisans vote for candidates based on reasons other than where they fall on some imaginary ideological spectrum. Mehmet Oz probably lost because he was successfully portrayed as an out-of-touch millionaire from New Jersey who didn't understand Pennsylvania. And he did himself no favors by continually reinforcing that perception.

That said, he still did far far better than his hard-right counterpart Mastriano. So by your framing, the "reasonable" candidate Oz still did far better. Oz got about 250,000 more votes than Mastriano on the same exact ballot, so there were about 1/4 million Pennsylvanians who voted for Oz for Senate and then crossed party lines and voted for Shapiro for governor. That is a larger number of people than the actual margin of victory for Fetterman which was 233,755 votes.

I'm sure Democrats would absolutely love it if the GOP follows your train of thought and abandons "moderate" and "reasonable" candidates like Oz in favor of hardliners like Mastriano.

Based on the 2020 election results when the same candidate was on the ballot in both states, Ohio is about 5 percentage points more Republican than Pennsylvania. That is how Vance won. Trump got 53.37% of the vote in Ohio in 2020. Vance got 53.3% of the vote. Pretty much the identical result.

By contrast, Trump got 48.8% of the vote in Pennsylvania and Oz got 46.6% of the vote so he underperformed Trump by about 2.2% Whereas Mastriano at 41.9% underperformed Trump by about 6.9%

I would frankly argue that neither Oz nor Mastriano were very good candidates and both were poor matches for the Pennsylvania electorate. Whose fault was that? As I recall, there was some leading GOP figure who basically hand-picked both of them in the primary and threw his entire organizational and financial support behind them. Who was that??? His name escapes me but it's on the tip of my tongue.

[Franklin]

This is just representative democracy in action. A mentally retarded senator to represent a mentally retarded electorate. Best not to focus too much on politics, for one's own sanity.

[temporal1]

.. neither Oz nor Mastriano were very good candidates ..

there should have been no requirement for “good” conservative candidates. “good” is certainly not a measure or holdup for libs.

This is just representative democracy in action. A mentally retarded senator to represent a mentally retarded electorate.
Best not to focus too much on politics, for one's own sanity.

There seems to be quite a lot of rethinking on what U.S. politics are now. By any accounts, the results are dismal, on public display, and can no longer be considered “one-offs.”

[RZehr]

This is just representative democracy in action. A mentally retarded senator to represent a mentally retarded electorate. Best not to focus too much on politics, for one's own sanity.

Well, whatever you do, don’t sugar coat what your thought is.

[Ken]

.. neither Oz nor Mastriano were very good candidates ..

there should have been no requirement for “good” conservative candidates. “good” is certainly not a measure or holdup for libs.

This is just representative democracy in action. A mentally retarded senator to represent a mentally retarded electorate.
Best not to focus too much on politics, for one's own sanity.

There seems to be quite a lot of rethinking on what U.S. politics are now. By any accounts, the results are dismal, on public display, and can no longer be considered “one-offs.”

I'm using the term "good" in the sense of good campaigners or good candidates that are appealing to the broader electorate. I'm not making a judgement about their specific policy issues or moral rectitude.

I don't live in PA, but by all reports, both Oz and Mastriano were poor candidates in the sense that they did not appeal well to the wider electorate. Oz was a wealthy fish-out-of-water in rural PA who couldn't decide which of his 12+ mansions in New Jersey, Florida, Ireland, Turkey, or New York was his actual real home. Whereas Mastriano spent all his time at Trump style rallies with the MAGA faithful and did nothing to expand his appeal to a wider audience. You can get away with that sort of thing in a red state like Texas. Not so much in a 50/50 swing state like PA where it is the broad middle that decides the election.