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Cook Political Report Flips Pennsylvania Senate Race Back to Toss Up

Cook Political Report Flips Pennsylvania Senate Race Back to Toss Up

Dr. Mehmet Oz is closing in on John Fetterman. No matter who wins, the race will be closer than people thought.

Things are looking up for Republicans. Last month, Cook Political Report changed the Oregon governor race from Lean Democrat to Toss-Up.

The Cook Political Report initially scored the Pennsylvania Senate race as Toss-Up.

The non-partisan election analysis newsletter flipped the score to Lean Democrat six weeks ago with a caveat: “it’s not out of the question that this could move back [to Toss Up] as the election nears.”

The race is back to Toss-Up:

Now, with five weeks until Election Day, that’s exactly where we find this race. In conversations with several GOP strategists and lawmakers — who a month and a half ago had begun to put the Keystone State in the loss column — this has emerged as a margin-of-error race that they once again see winnable. Republicans and Democrats alike admit the race has tightened and that Pennsylvania could be the tipping point state for the Senate majority.

As of Monday evening, the current FiveThirtyEight average shows Fetterman ahead by 6 points, while RealClearPolitics puts the Democrat with a 4.1 point advantage. But recent polls have shown the margin clearly closing between the two throughout September, with polls ending last month having the narrowest margin. After a brutal primary, it is becoming clear many Republican voters are coming home to Oz — as the New York Times’s Nate Cohn pointed out this morning, with Oz’s vote share among the GOP rising 10 points in a recent Fox News poll — even if it is begrudgingly.

But the more interesting number, as my colleague Amy Walter has previously written about, is that Fetterman’s vote share has decreased — and as we saw in polls in 2020, for Democrats especially, it’s been more instructive to look at that number as a possible ceiling. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll out today, for example, shows Fetterman ahead of Oz by six points (46%-40%). Several polls in late August and early September showed Fetterman above or hovering just below 50 percent. Since then, there’s been a clear downward trend.

The writers at Cook Political Report watched a focus group of Republicans who voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 but chose Biden in 2020. Some will vote for Oz, who has Trump’s endorsement, with most citing “the crime ads as a reason for their vote for Oz.”

One pro-Oz ad reminded voters of when Fetterman pulled a gun on a black jogger:

The incident happened nine years ago when Fetterman was mayor of the Pittsburgh-area town of Braddock. He said he heard what he thought was gunfire, saw a man running away, chased him down with his shotgun and detained him until police arrived. The jogger, Chris Miyares, was found at the time to have committed no crime.

Fetterman’s campaign walked back his talking point about releasing second-degree murderers from prison. He also said he wouldn’t defund the police, which is different from his stance two years ago.

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Comments

“Fetterman’s campaign walked back his talking point about releasing second-degree murderers from prison.”

“He also said he wouldn’t defund the police, which is different from his stance two years ago.”

In a previous article there were a lot of comments on the subject of “denial”. Today we see that denial is the platform Fetterman’s campaign is running on. He ain’t got nothing else.

    henrybowman in reply to Peabody. | October 5, 2022 at 7:14 am

    Fetterman is a Democrat, meaning that he could declare himself a woman today, and (under threat of cancellation) no one in the public eye could bring up the fact that he was ever a man.
    Given that achievement, putting old platform planks into the memory hole is a small thing, something Democrats have been doing every day for over five decades.

“this has emerged as a margin-of-error race”

Its not enough to beat the margin of error. They have to beat the margin of fraud.

Trafalgar and Emerson have both had recent polls showing the race within 2 points which is a virtual tie within the margin of error.

Who knows what will happen between now and Nov 8 but typically most polls since 2016 have underestimated GOP results in swing states.

Check out the latest Emerson poll. They’re major and D-leaning (see 538’s pollster ratings), and they have the R candidate for governor leading the D candidate. I’ll believe it when I see it, but wow.

It’s margins of fraud that has me worried.
Fetterman is a hard Leftist who is.hiding more than Sundowner did, or is.

If cook says tossup they probably actually think it’s ‘leans r’. Cook seems t tend one step to the left of results.

OwenKellogg-Engineer | October 5, 2022 at 8:19 am

To borrow from James Carville:

“It’s the crime, stupid!”

E Howard Hunt | October 5, 2022 at 9:55 am

Fetterman should claim he stroked out immediately after trying one of Oz’s miracle health supplements.

It’s October, when the Democrats start their endless hammering of fake and overblown news hype in order to scare the voters. This is just the tip of the iceberg. By the end of the month, they’ll be in full werewolf-froth mode.

125% turn out in Philadelphia, a city of imbeciles with 4th grade reading levels who would vote for a retarded hamster as long as it were a Democrat.

If a cardiac surgeon cannot beat a mentally impaired, leftist radical in a free and fair election: America is beyond hope, it’s over.

    Subotai Bahadur in reply to MAJack. | October 5, 2022 at 9:47 pm

    What is this free and fair election of which you speak? Everybody needs to vote, if only because it may be the last time it is possible. But honestly expect election fraud and theft and start thinking about what then.

    Subotai Bahadur

1. This is your brain
2. This is your brain on drugs
3. Transplant it in a Zombie and you have Fetterman on the way to the Senate

BierceAmbrose | October 5, 2022 at 3:50 pm

Just because The Screaming D’s ran the only candidate and campaign that could possibly *lose* to The Donald in 2016, doesn’t mean The Feckless R’s have to do the same now. Though they did do a good job of running to lose in the 2 Presidential elections before that.

Never-under estimate the R’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Going in our direction but not there yet; if you have the cash to spare there s a campaign for senate in PA that is of right now not winning and desperately needs the cash and will hopefully be running a better campaign now that it really is running out of time (and unfortunately Oz isn’t winning right now).