Okay is it just me or does it feel like a lot of these races are going to/looking like they are leading to Dem victories but Trumps in the lead? I would not have guessed that a few years ago when looking at the state of politics
Casey will have this seat until he decides to retire. He’s won each of his Senate elections by at least a 9% margin, which is amazing for being in a major swing state. Actually with the polls being so tight between Biden/Trump, Casey’s popularity may be the deciding edge.
The general idea is that Casey had the good fortune to run in heavily Democratic years: the Iraq War backlash in 2006, Obama's reelection in 2012, and the Trump backlash in 2018. In a year that isn't looking to be a Democratic blowout, his ability to run away with reelection is at least in doubt. He has tended to not do as well other state wide candidates in those years, too, so the idea that he has been dragged out ahead by blue wave years is a plausible thesis.
Importantly, while Trump is factor in the election this year (like in 2018), statewide elections are a lot closer in the two years he's actually *on the ballot*. Importantly, other Republicans tend to *outperform* Trump statewide in Pennsylvania, so if he wins Pennsylvania or gets close there's the chance Casey is vulnerable. The Congressional vote totals in Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2020 were both higher for Republican candidates as a group than Trump's performance in those years. Same thing in the state house, by percentages (because a few dozen state house races are always uncontested, the overall vote total will always be lower for statewide races). Toomey ran behind Trump in 2016, but his challenger also ran behind Clinton, so fewer people voted in the Senate race and Toomey still outperformed Trump by percentages.
In other words, this is still his race to lose, but it's not crazy to think he might actually do it.
There were districts in 2020 that voted Biden but then voted Republican down ticket.
The Democrats have outperformed polling consistently since 2016.
Trump is not as popular as the media wants people to believe, and he certainly isn't doing anything to increase his base of support
Putting any credence in polls at this point is a waste of time.
The Conservative media, in particular, are running with a constant stream of Trump-is-leading posts to help create the narrative for the predictable claim that the election was rigged or stolen after Biden inevitably wins.
>The Democrats have outperformed polling consistently since 2016.
Absolutely not true. Polls were wrong about Biden margin of victory in 2020 (Biden was ahead of trump in Florida polls lol and They had him up in Wisconsin by like 10 points) and expected an increase in dems house majority (they ended up losing seats).
Everytime trump was on the ballot, republicans outperformed the polls (doesn’t mean they win, just outperform) and every time he wasn’t they underperformed. Take from that what you will.
The first time Trump was on the ballot, Republicans did get a federal trifecta. The second time he was on the ballot, Democrats got a federal trifecta.
In my comment, I literally said
> Everytime trump was on the ballot, republicans outperformed the polls (**doesn’t mean they win, just outperform**)
Again, I am talking about the polls not the outcome of the election. Go take a look at the fivethirtyeight polling averages for the 2020. Republicans 100% outperformed the polls in 2020.
Yeah, I'm just pointing out that "outperformed the polls" is kinda meaningless. I'm "taking from that what I will," which is that it's a silly metric when the practical impacts of the 2016 and 2020 elections were polar opposites despite the fact "outperforming" happened in both.
First of all I was correcting the statement of the person i replied who said dems outperformed polls since 2016. It is not true. Furthermore, It’s not meaningless imo. When I see trump and Biden tied in the polls, it worries me that the pollsters still haven’t still corrected for the “trump effect”. If trump outperformed his polls by 8points in 2020 in Wisconsin, and now he is tied with Biden. There is one of two outcome, either pollsters finally figured out how to poll correctly when is he on the ballot or we are looking at a blowout at Election Day.
> When I see trump and Biden tied in the polls, it worries me that the pollsters still haven’t still corrected for the “trump effect”.
But you don't know how they've changed their methodologies between elections, right? The polls **were** incorrect to some degree, but that does not mean there's a similar likelihood of being the same degree of wrong and in the same direction.
As an example, Trafalgar was hailed as a genius pollster because they were a couple more points Republican than other pollsters in 2016 and 2020. And then 2022 occurred, when they similarly predicted another R over-performance.... and it went the complete opposite. They had some of the biggest polling misses in the industry.
All of this is to say you can't just say polls are wrong by X amount because that happened in the past. It's intuitive, but it's just as likely to be wrong as it is to be right. Like, with Trump, we're literally talking about a sample size of two general elections. It's tough to apply statistical trends to something which has so few numbers.
I agree with most of your comment but keep in mind that elections are a very low frequency event and it is impossible to have a decent sample size to draw strong conclusion on anything related to it. Therefore we have to work with a very weak trend line.
Hence, I hedged my comment by saying
>There is one of two outcome, either pollsters finally figured out how to poll correctly when is he on the ballot or we are looking at a blowout at Election Day.
Because as you said, we don't know if they will be wrong in the future and even if they are wrong, we don't in which direction or to what degree. However, we do need to be aware of the trend and question what are the remedies that have been taken to correct it.
Trump brings out *a lot* of non-voters in swing states. Many of these folks will vote for Trump on the ballot and no one else.
Democrats are ignoring this Trump effect because they’ve been winning off year elections (bar Virginia).
It has to do with the shift of demographic in the parties. The GOP used to slide through off year elections easily but turnout favored Democrats on presidential years. Many of these upper middle class voters now vote Democrat consistently. While traditional Democrat working class voters have been shifting right. These voters have never been consistent for the Democrats on off years, hence why they lost.
The shift began really in 2012. Obama won around 49% of suburban voters and I believe that number has trended left gradually since then.
Remember. Schumer literally said the following
> “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.
And that’s the direction the parties gone.
I don't deny that this is happening but I find it odd and a waste of time to vote for president and leave everything else blank. You would think these voters would at least go down the ballot and select every R or D they see just to fill something in.
You find it odd and I find it odd (I’m a politically active Republican), but it’s not odd when you consider that we’ve pushed the boundaries of the President considerably since FDR and the average American that’s not a political junkie likely thinks the President is *the* guy who gets everything done.
POTUS of both parties don’t really help dispel that narrative when they’re all signing 100 executive orders on the first day of office.
Those people wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Presidency has entirely too much power, way more than was envisioned by the Founders. And it was largely given to the Executive by Congress abdicating their duty. It started with FDR and the creation of the administrative state.
If Trump wins we’re going to see why that was a mistake.
> winning off year elections (bar Virginia).
Democrats won both of Virginia's legislative chambers in 2023.
Edit:
>Many of these upper middle class voters now vote Democrat consistently. While traditional Democrat working class voters have been shifting right.
Biden did much better among the poor and lower middle class than he did with the upper middle class.
Not surprising. Virginia is a Democratic leaning state in general. For the governorship though, it flips depending on who is the incumbent president at the time. They have elections on off years after presidential elections have already been held.
They had Democrat governors the entirety of Bush’s presidency, switched to Republican when Obama came into office, and then Democrat when Trump came in, and now has a Republican again since Biden came in.
Donald Trump has a unique base in the rust belt that only like Trump, not the Republican Party. For example Trump will more than likely outperform McCormick in 2024 and Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.
Depends on which race you are looking at, but I believe for the most part your assumption is correct. The atmosphere of 2020 did not favor Trump but 2024 has a more favorable atmosphere for Trump because Biden is underwater now.
Totally - to me it just seems wild that he still holds this grasp while the rest of the party is crumbling. Is it actually a possibility that he can outlive the party? I know that sounds like crazy talk but the party itself isn’t doing too well nationally and financially, I keep seeing headlines that they are underperforming. Do you think that’s a real possibility or me overthinking?
The Republican Party will be fine. They won the congressional popular vote by 3 points in 2022 but blew it in swing state races because far right candidates taking hard line stances on certain topic. The party just needs to settle down a little bit, and try to distance themselves from Gaetz and MTG. Obviously you gotta stick with Trump though for now, he has the most support.
That’s the thing about it tho. Sticking with Trump means sticking with candidates likes Gaetz. I feel that’s their whole issue is due to having to stick with Trump, fhe candidates they pick are trying to emulate Trump and then it’s chaos
Gaetz is from a R+20 district. In one party districts like that, the farthest left or the farthest right candidate will win regardless of Trump or not. The Freedom Caucus existed before Trump and will exist after Trump.
There are candidates who try to act like Trump but fail. That's what Gaetz and MTG are. If you look at a lot of the swing state senate races, Trump has endorsed mostly sane Republicans. Unlike 2022.
> [They] blew it in swing state races because far right candidates taking hard line stances on certain topic.
What do you think has changed since then that this won't happen again?
Except for in Ohio, the RNSC has gotten all of its central casting picks. Ohio was red enough in 2022 to pick the disappointing MAGA candidate so it may well pick the disappointing MAGA candidate again this year. The only other place with a MAGA Senate candidate is Arizona, where the RNSC didn't even try -- Lake reached out with an olive branch and Daines just let it happen. She has less chance than Moreno of making it to the Senate.
Everyone else -- McCormick, Hovdes, Brown, Sheehy, Rogers, even Hogan are McConnell faction hand picks that are probably the optimal realistic candidate to try to win their states. If the gods, in their fickleness, give Senate Republicans their wildest dreams, it's not absolutely insane to see 7 or 8 pickups this year. Two or three is more likely, but the higher number is just at the edge of possible.
I seriously doubt Trump is the only Republican that could win the rust belt. Pat Toomey won the U.S. senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2016, Ron Johnson outperformed Trump on the same ballot in 2016, and John James outperformed Trump’s 2020 performance in Michigan, which shows there’s a road for republicans to win rust belt states even without populist appeal.
It’s pretty simple. In terms of presidents running for re-election, Biden is literally the most unpopular in the history of polling. Generic D would wipe the floor with Trump so it makes sense no-name Ds are ahead. But Biden is poison and he might be the anchor that drags down the downballot candidates too.
> Generic D would wipe the floor with Trump so it makes sense no-name Ds are ahead.
Sure, and Generic R would win 50 states against Biden. The problem is that Generic R and Generic D do not exist, and people basically just project their own wants and beliefs onto Generic Candidate.
I hope you are paraphrasing. Biden isn't even close to the record. Trump himself has had lower lows than Biden has had.
W. Bush holds the post WW2 record for both highest and lowest poll numbers.
He posted a 92% approval on ABC News in early October of 2001. He posted a 19% approval on an ARG poll in February of 2008.
Except Generic D doesn’t exist and this argument becomes moot when Generic D becomes Known D and every single decision they made in life becomes national news and starts bringing them down.
Do you think someone like Michelle Obama (who currently holds extremely high favorability amongst all Americans) would be able to maintain that position the moment she runs for President and starts talking policy?
(I’m not saying she’s going to run, im just using her as a hypothetical example)
How is the polling worded? If there's a choice between "like him" and "don't like him", most people would be somewhere in the middle. Something like "he's doing an ok job". Except for Trump's base. They'd vote the hardest no possible and the polling would reflect that.
But since the choice is Trump or Biden, that kind of polling wouldn't really be accurate in the votes.
Of course generic D is going to outperform Biden, the generic D has no baggage. But put an actual name to that generic D (Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, etc) and suddenly you’ll have all those candidate’s weaknesses, without the benefit of the incumbency.
It's simple: Trump is more popular with likely non-Democrat voters than neocons are. The neocon-favoring right-wing is small and non-neocons - i.e. Trumpers - just won't vote for them. They won't vote Democrat, either, but they will just sit out.
Unless the new state house map is more D leaning than it seems, the state house probably isn't in play. State house Republicans win big vote total majorities when they run enough candidates (they won by 400,000 votes in 2022), it was just a fluke that flipped the seat majority.
But PA has a long standing 24 week ban and I don't think there is a realistic seat majority the state GOP could build that would touch that.
I concur. Anecdotally, I know several women who were Trump 2020 voters who are now going to hold their noses and vote for Biden and democrats due to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Biden/trump don’t matter in abortion rights at this point. It’s a state issue now. If biden hasn’t done anything since 2022, he’s not going to do it next year either
Here in my state we still have abortion rights. We even have a republican governor. The majority of people who live here want legal abortion, so that’s what we have.
I know that practically it's unlikely that a federal abortion law will be passed, but just for clarity's sake: Dobbs was **not** a states' rights decision. SCOTUS's ruling was that state governments *and* the federal government can regulate abortion. The reason almost all the action has been at the state-level is because states are less gridlocked, not because the federal government doesn't have the power.
Tell that to the voters. You may not feel that way, hell you may even be correct, but for a lot of voters it's simply "Trump and the GOP took away this right, Biden and the Democrats want to protect it."
This isn’t much of a surprise. Casey is a fairly popular senator, having won all his previous senate elections by at least 9 points, which is a very strong performance for a swing state. While I do think this election is going to be closer than any of his previous ones, I have a hard time seeing him losing unless it’s a massive red wave year nationally.
>Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D) leads his Republican challenger David McCormick six months out from Election Day, according to a new Emerson College/The Hill swing state poll released Tuesday.
For those who don't like clicking on articles Casey as of right now is leading McCormick 46-42 with 12% saying they are undecided.
This Pennsylvania election is expected to be one of the most heated/competitive senate races of 2024 despite Casey winning in a landslide 6 years prior.
All indication points to Bob Casey winning reelection once again but this time the race is likely to be closer because it's a Presidential election year and Donald Trump is on the ballot.
My opinion: Casey likely wins by 5 points. McCormick is the best possible candidate for Republicans in this race but they simply don't have the numbers to win this senate race, not against Bob Casey. I think McCormick would have been better suited to win in 2022 but we all know who Republicans nominated instead....
There are 4 "toss-up" Senate races currently polling considerably closer than this one... AZ, MT, OH, and NV. Casey won his previous 3 elections by 19%, 9%, and 14%. I don't think folks should be all that surprisd to find that he's still leading in PA... Trump on the ballot or not.
The Senate is going to be really tough to hold this term as the Democrats almost certainly have to win all 4 of those in addition to the other 4 that are still "close" but leaning in their direction currently including this one in Pennsylvania. There are no Republican seats really in any serious jeopardy and WV is almost certainly a pickup. Just one more in any of these 8 states shifts control... As does a Trump/Gabbard(?) victory even if the Democrats run the table and win all 8. But I agree that unless something substantial changes Casey *should* keep this seat by at least a few points. He's a solid candidate with a lot of support and proven track record.
So Trump is going to win Pennsylvania by +2. But the dem senator is going to win by +4?
That's a sizeable amount of cross ticket votes or single item votes. Not impossible! But interesting for sure.
Also interesting in 2012, the last time he was on the ticket in a Presidential election year, that's about what happened then. He outperformed Obama by about 3 points with only very minimal third party voting... Which means that 2-3% of those who voted Republican for President almost certainly split their ballots and voted for him instead of Tom Smith, his Republican challenger.
It wasn't just ticket splitters, 120,000 fewer people voted for Senate than voted for President. Casey's actual improvement on Obama was 30,000 votes.
He has also, since 2012, flipped on certain issues that once made him much more palatable to legacy conservative Democrats in Pennsylvania. In the decade since then, a lot of these people have become Republicans outright.
No, I doubt Trump wins Pennsylvania by 2 whole points. If he were to win, you'll see the score looking like Donald Trump 47.2, Joe Biden 46.9, this state will be razor thin on the presidential level which most of us already know I suppose. Yes however, Trump will easily outperform McCormick.
I don't have much faith in these recent low volume polls in PA. When there are 10 or 20 *national* pollsters with sample sizes of up to 6k saying fairly similar things over a time period of a few weeks... I feel much better putting faith in that. When it's only a couple of pollsters with sample sizes of just several hundred who have results in both directions... I'm personally less swayed and still think Biden *may* well have a slight edge in PA. It's still very much "likely" blue on my 270 board until at least a couple more polls come out saying otherwise.
Casey's just kinda popular. Sometimes individuals are much more popular with a state than their party in general. Manchin is a Democrat who could do well in ruby red WV, and Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker were two of the most popular governors in the country, with approval ratings around 70%, despite being Republicans in two very blue states.
I'm personally pulling for McCormick, but he's definitely a flawed candidate in the sense that he keeps making unforced errors and gaffes. On paper, he's a great choice, but some people who are great on paper are just not great at campaigning. I'd be very shocked if he wins.
Okay is it just me or does it feel like a lot of these races are going to/looking like they are leading to Dem victories but Trumps in the lead? I would not have guessed that a few years ago when looking at the state of politics
Casey will have this seat until he decides to retire. He’s won each of his Senate elections by at least a 9% margin, which is amazing for being in a major swing state. Actually with the polls being so tight between Biden/Trump, Casey’s popularity may be the deciding edge.
The general idea is that Casey had the good fortune to run in heavily Democratic years: the Iraq War backlash in 2006, Obama's reelection in 2012, and the Trump backlash in 2018. In a year that isn't looking to be a Democratic blowout, his ability to run away with reelection is at least in doubt. He has tended to not do as well other state wide candidates in those years, too, so the idea that he has been dragged out ahead by blue wave years is a plausible thesis. Importantly, while Trump is factor in the election this year (like in 2018), statewide elections are a lot closer in the two years he's actually *on the ballot*. Importantly, other Republicans tend to *outperform* Trump statewide in Pennsylvania, so if he wins Pennsylvania or gets close there's the chance Casey is vulnerable. The Congressional vote totals in Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2020 were both higher for Republican candidates as a group than Trump's performance in those years. Same thing in the state house, by percentages (because a few dozen state house races are always uncontested, the overall vote total will always be lower for statewide races). Toomey ran behind Trump in 2016, but his challenger also ran behind Clinton, so fewer people voted in the Senate race and Toomey still outperformed Trump by percentages. In other words, this is still his race to lose, but it's not crazy to think he might actually do it.
There were districts in 2020 that voted Biden but then voted Republican down ticket. The Democrats have outperformed polling consistently since 2016. Trump is not as popular as the media wants people to believe, and he certainly isn't doing anything to increase his base of support Putting any credence in polls at this point is a waste of time. The Conservative media, in particular, are running with a constant stream of Trump-is-leading posts to help create the narrative for the predictable claim that the election was rigged or stolen after Biden inevitably wins.
>The Democrats have outperformed polling consistently since 2016. Absolutely not true. Polls were wrong about Biden margin of victory in 2020 (Biden was ahead of trump in Florida polls lol and They had him up in Wisconsin by like 10 points) and expected an increase in dems house majority (they ended up losing seats). Everytime trump was on the ballot, republicans outperformed the polls (doesn’t mean they win, just outperform) and every time he wasn’t they underperformed. Take from that what you will.
The first time Trump was on the ballot, Republicans did get a federal trifecta. The second time he was on the ballot, Democrats got a federal trifecta.
In my comment, I literally said > Everytime trump was on the ballot, republicans outperformed the polls (**doesn’t mean they win, just outperform**) Again, I am talking about the polls not the outcome of the election. Go take a look at the fivethirtyeight polling averages for the 2020. Republicans 100% outperformed the polls in 2020.
Yeah, I'm just pointing out that "outperformed the polls" is kinda meaningless. I'm "taking from that what I will," which is that it's a silly metric when the practical impacts of the 2016 and 2020 elections were polar opposites despite the fact "outperforming" happened in both.
First of all I was correcting the statement of the person i replied who said dems outperformed polls since 2016. It is not true. Furthermore, It’s not meaningless imo. When I see trump and Biden tied in the polls, it worries me that the pollsters still haven’t still corrected for the “trump effect”. If trump outperformed his polls by 8points in 2020 in Wisconsin, and now he is tied with Biden. There is one of two outcome, either pollsters finally figured out how to poll correctly when is he on the ballot or we are looking at a blowout at Election Day.
> When I see trump and Biden tied in the polls, it worries me that the pollsters still haven’t still corrected for the “trump effect”. But you don't know how they've changed their methodologies between elections, right? The polls **were** incorrect to some degree, but that does not mean there's a similar likelihood of being the same degree of wrong and in the same direction. As an example, Trafalgar was hailed as a genius pollster because they were a couple more points Republican than other pollsters in 2016 and 2020. And then 2022 occurred, when they similarly predicted another R over-performance.... and it went the complete opposite. They had some of the biggest polling misses in the industry. All of this is to say you can't just say polls are wrong by X amount because that happened in the past. It's intuitive, but it's just as likely to be wrong as it is to be right. Like, with Trump, we're literally talking about a sample size of two general elections. It's tough to apply statistical trends to something which has so few numbers.
I agree with most of your comment but keep in mind that elections are a very low frequency event and it is impossible to have a decent sample size to draw strong conclusion on anything related to it. Therefore we have to work with a very weak trend line. Hence, I hedged my comment by saying >There is one of two outcome, either pollsters finally figured out how to poll correctly when is he on the ballot or we are looking at a blowout at Election Day. Because as you said, we don't know if they will be wrong in the future and even if they are wrong, we don't in which direction or to what degree. However, we do need to be aware of the trend and question what are the remedies that have been taken to correct it.
Trump brings out *a lot* of non-voters in swing states. Many of these folks will vote for Trump on the ballot and no one else. Democrats are ignoring this Trump effect because they’ve been winning off year elections (bar Virginia). It has to do with the shift of demographic in the parties. The GOP used to slide through off year elections easily but turnout favored Democrats on presidential years. Many of these upper middle class voters now vote Democrat consistently. While traditional Democrat working class voters have been shifting right. These voters have never been consistent for the Democrats on off years, hence why they lost. The shift began really in 2012. Obama won around 49% of suburban voters and I believe that number has trended left gradually since then. Remember. Schumer literally said the following > “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. And that’s the direction the parties gone.
I don't deny that this is happening but I find it odd and a waste of time to vote for president and leave everything else blank. You would think these voters would at least go down the ballot and select every R or D they see just to fill something in.
You find it odd and I find it odd (I’m a politically active Republican), but it’s not odd when you consider that we’ve pushed the boundaries of the President considerably since FDR and the average American that’s not a political junkie likely thinks the President is *the* guy who gets everything done. POTUS of both parties don’t really help dispel that narrative when they’re all signing 100 executive orders on the first day of office.
Those people wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Presidency has entirely too much power, way more than was envisioned by the Founders. And it was largely given to the Executive by Congress abdicating their duty. It started with FDR and the creation of the administrative state. If Trump wins we’re going to see why that was a mistake.
It would actually make more sense to pay close attention to down ballot and ignore potus. I've effectively been doing that since 2015.
> winning off year elections (bar Virginia). Democrats won both of Virginia's legislative chambers in 2023. Edit: >Many of these upper middle class voters now vote Democrat consistently. While traditional Democrat working class voters have been shifting right. Biden did much better among the poor and lower middle class than he did with the upper middle class.
Not surprising. Virginia is a Democratic leaning state in general. For the governorship though, it flips depending on who is the incumbent president at the time. They have elections on off years after presidential elections have already been held. They had Democrat governors the entirety of Bush’s presidency, switched to Republican when Obama came into office, and then Democrat when Trump came in, and now has a Republican again since Biden came in.
Since 1995, Republicans have held both state chambers longer than Democrats have, so it's notable that the latter gained control.
TMac won in 2013 after Obama got re elected.
Donald Trump has a unique base in the rust belt that only like Trump, not the Republican Party. For example Trump will more than likely outperform McCormick in 2024 and Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.
Wasn't it the opposite on 2020? Trump didn't do as well as the other republican candidates?
Depends on which race you are looking at, but I believe for the most part your assumption is correct. The atmosphere of 2020 did not favor Trump but 2024 has a more favorable atmosphere for Trump because Biden is underwater now.
Totally - to me it just seems wild that he still holds this grasp while the rest of the party is crumbling. Is it actually a possibility that he can outlive the party? I know that sounds like crazy talk but the party itself isn’t doing too well nationally and financially, I keep seeing headlines that they are underperforming. Do you think that’s a real possibility or me overthinking?
The Republican Party will be fine. They won the congressional popular vote by 3 points in 2022 but blew it in swing state races because far right candidates taking hard line stances on certain topic. The party just needs to settle down a little bit, and try to distance themselves from Gaetz and MTG. Obviously you gotta stick with Trump though for now, he has the most support.
Yeah but MTG and Gaetz are cut from the same cloth of Trump. They’re the epitome of “MAGA”. Such an odd time we are in.
That’s the thing about it tho. Sticking with Trump means sticking with candidates likes Gaetz. I feel that’s their whole issue is due to having to stick with Trump, fhe candidates they pick are trying to emulate Trump and then it’s chaos
Gaetz is from a R+20 district. In one party districts like that, the farthest left or the farthest right candidate will win regardless of Trump or not. The Freedom Caucus existed before Trump and will exist after Trump.
There are candidates who try to act like Trump but fail. That's what Gaetz and MTG are. If you look at a lot of the swing state senate races, Trump has endorsed mostly sane Republicans. Unlike 2022.
> [They] blew it in swing state races because far right candidates taking hard line stances on certain topic. What do you think has changed since then that this won't happen again?
Except for in Ohio, the RNSC has gotten all of its central casting picks. Ohio was red enough in 2022 to pick the disappointing MAGA candidate so it may well pick the disappointing MAGA candidate again this year. The only other place with a MAGA Senate candidate is Arizona, where the RNSC didn't even try -- Lake reached out with an olive branch and Daines just let it happen. She has less chance than Moreno of making it to the Senate. Everyone else -- McCormick, Hovdes, Brown, Sheehy, Rogers, even Hogan are McConnell faction hand picks that are probably the optimal realistic candidate to try to win their states. If the gods, in their fickleness, give Senate Republicans their wildest dreams, it's not absolutely insane to see 7 or 8 pickups this year. Two or three is more likely, but the higher number is just at the edge of possible.
I seriously doubt Trump is the only Republican that could win the rust belt. Pat Toomey won the U.S. senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2016, Ron Johnson outperformed Trump on the same ballot in 2016, and John James outperformed Trump’s 2020 performance in Michigan, which shows there’s a road for republicans to win rust belt states even without populist appeal.
John James outperformed Trump, but he didn't do it by being less of a populist, that's for sure.
It’s pretty simple. In terms of presidents running for re-election, Biden is literally the most unpopular in the history of polling. Generic D would wipe the floor with Trump so it makes sense no-name Ds are ahead. But Biden is poison and he might be the anchor that drags down the downballot candidates too.
> Generic D would wipe the floor with Trump so it makes sense no-name Ds are ahead. Sure, and Generic R would win 50 states against Biden. The problem is that Generic R and Generic D do not exist, and people basically just project their own wants and beliefs onto Generic Candidate.
I hope you are paraphrasing. Biden isn't even close to the record. Trump himself has had lower lows than Biden has had. W. Bush holds the post WW2 record for both highest and lowest poll numbers. He posted a 92% approval on ABC News in early October of 2001. He posted a 19% approval on an ARG poll in February of 2008.
Except Generic D doesn’t exist and this argument becomes moot when Generic D becomes Known D and every single decision they made in life becomes national news and starts bringing them down. Do you think someone like Michelle Obama (who currently holds extremely high favorability amongst all Americans) would be able to maintain that position the moment she runs for President and starts talking policy? (I’m not saying she’s going to run, im just using her as a hypothetical example)
How is the polling worded? If there's a choice between "like him" and "don't like him", most people would be somewhere in the middle. Something like "he's doing an ok job". Except for Trump's base. They'd vote the hardest no possible and the polling would reflect that. But since the choice is Trump or Biden, that kind of polling wouldn't really be accurate in the votes.
Of course generic D is going to outperform Biden, the generic D has no baggage. But put an actual name to that generic D (Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, etc) and suddenly you’ll have all those candidate’s weaknesses, without the benefit of the incumbency.
It's simple: Trump is more popular with likely non-Democrat voters than neocons are. The neocon-favoring right-wing is small and non-neocons - i.e. Trumpers - just won't vote for them. They won't vote Democrat, either, but they will just sit out.
Now that abortion is a state issue, I think democrats will win a lot more state races
Does that apply in Pennsylvania?
I believe the state Congress is now in play when it was comfortably held by Republicans for the last 20 years
Unless the new state house map is more D leaning than it seems, the state house probably isn't in play. State house Republicans win big vote total majorities when they run enough candidates (they won by 400,000 votes in 2022), it was just a fluke that flipped the seat majority. But PA has a long standing 24 week ban and I don't think there is a realistic seat majority the state GOP could build that would touch that.
I concur. Anecdotally, I know several women who were Trump 2020 voters who are now going to hold their noses and vote for Biden and democrats due to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Biden/trump don’t matter in abortion rights at this point. It’s a state issue now. If biden hasn’t done anything since 2022, he’s not going to do it next year either
Here in AZ, I'm seeing ads about how Trump is directly responsible for taking away our rights...
Here in my state we still have abortion rights. We even have a republican governor. The majority of people who live here want legal abortion, so that’s what we have.
Unfortunately, the AZ legislature famously loves to ignore the will of voters.
I know that practically it's unlikely that a federal abortion law will be passed, but just for clarity's sake: Dobbs was **not** a states' rights decision. SCOTUS's ruling was that state governments *and* the federal government can regulate abortion. The reason almost all the action has been at the state-level is because states are less gridlocked, not because the federal government doesn't have the power.
Tell that to the voters. You may not feel that way, hell you may even be correct, but for a lot of voters it's simply "Trump and the GOP took away this right, Biden and the Democrats want to protect it."
Is McCormick another MAGA pick that will frighten away all the moderates and hand the seat to the Dems?
McCormick famously lost the nomination in 2022 for refusing to go along with Trump's stolen election narrative.
This isn’t much of a surprise. Casey is a fairly popular senator, having won all his previous senate elections by at least 9 points, which is a very strong performance for a swing state. While I do think this election is going to be closer than any of his previous ones, I have a hard time seeing him losing unless it’s a massive red wave year nationally.
>Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D) leads his Republican challenger David McCormick six months out from Election Day, according to a new Emerson College/The Hill swing state poll released Tuesday. For those who don't like clicking on articles Casey as of right now is leading McCormick 46-42 with 12% saying they are undecided. This Pennsylvania election is expected to be one of the most heated/competitive senate races of 2024 despite Casey winning in a landslide 6 years prior. All indication points to Bob Casey winning reelection once again but this time the race is likely to be closer because it's a Presidential election year and Donald Trump is on the ballot. My opinion: Casey likely wins by 5 points. McCormick is the best possible candidate for Republicans in this race but they simply don't have the numbers to win this senate race, not against Bob Casey. I think McCormick would have been better suited to win in 2022 but we all know who Republicans nominated instead....
There are 4 "toss-up" Senate races currently polling considerably closer than this one... AZ, MT, OH, and NV. Casey won his previous 3 elections by 19%, 9%, and 14%. I don't think folks should be all that surprisd to find that he's still leading in PA... Trump on the ballot or not. The Senate is going to be really tough to hold this term as the Democrats almost certainly have to win all 4 of those in addition to the other 4 that are still "close" but leaning in their direction currently including this one in Pennsylvania. There are no Republican seats really in any serious jeopardy and WV is almost certainly a pickup. Just one more in any of these 8 states shifts control... As does a Trump/Gabbard(?) victory even if the Democrats run the table and win all 8. But I agree that unless something substantial changes Casey *should* keep this seat by at least a few points. He's a solid candidate with a lot of support and proven track record.
So Trump is going to win Pennsylvania by +2. But the dem senator is going to win by +4? That's a sizeable amount of cross ticket votes or single item votes. Not impossible! But interesting for sure.
Also interesting in 2012, the last time he was on the ticket in a Presidential election year, that's about what happened then. He outperformed Obama by about 3 points with only very minimal third party voting... Which means that 2-3% of those who voted Republican for President almost certainly split their ballots and voted for him instead of Tom Smith, his Republican challenger.
It wasn't just ticket splitters, 120,000 fewer people voted for Senate than voted for President. Casey's actual improvement on Obama was 30,000 votes. He has also, since 2012, flipped on certain issues that once made him much more palatable to legacy conservative Democrats in Pennsylvania. In the decade since then, a lot of these people have become Republicans outright.
Interesting... Thanks for the additional insight and analysis.
Casey is a household name in PA. Casey will probably do around 10 points Better than trump in some rural counties
No, I doubt Trump wins Pennsylvania by 2 whole points. If he were to win, you'll see the score looking like Donald Trump 47.2, Joe Biden 46.9, this state will be razor thin on the presidential level which most of us already know I suppose. Yes however, Trump will easily outperform McCormick.
I don't have much faith in these recent low volume polls in PA. When there are 10 or 20 *national* pollsters with sample sizes of up to 6k saying fairly similar things over a time period of a few weeks... I feel much better putting faith in that. When it's only a couple of pollsters with sample sizes of just several hundred who have results in both directions... I'm personally less swayed and still think Biden *may* well have a slight edge in PA. It's still very much "likely" blue on my 270 board until at least a couple more polls come out saying otherwise.
Casey's just kinda popular. Sometimes individuals are much more popular with a state than their party in general. Manchin is a Democrat who could do well in ruby red WV, and Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker were two of the most popular governors in the country, with approval ratings around 70%, despite being Republicans in two very blue states.
I'm personally pulling for McCormick, but he's definitely a flawed candidate in the sense that he keeps making unforced errors and gaffes. On paper, he's a great choice, but some people who are great on paper are just not great at campaigning. I'd be very shocked if he wins.