Poll: 'Blue wave' may swamp Republican nominees for governor, U.S. Senate in Pa.

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Democratic voter enthusiasm could swamp and then sink the Republican campaigns for the U.S. Senate and governor in Pennsylvania, according to a new Franklin & Marshall College Poll. The "blue wave" projected to help the Democratic Party in the midterm general election is being propelled in great part by President Trump's actions and administration, according to G. Terry Madonna, the poll's director. "The blue wave that we see nationally is in this state," Madonna said of his poll results, released Thursday. "The only question is on Nov. 6 will it be light blue, medium blue or heavy blue?"

<...>

Among likely voters in the poll, Casey led Barletta by 17 points, 50 percent to 33 percent, with 15 percent undecided. Libertarian nominee Dale Kerns and Green Party nominee Neal Gale were in low single digits. Former State Sen. Scott Wagner, a York County Republican challenging Gov. Wolf's bid for a second term, was unknown to 46 percent of the voters in the poll, while 22 percent had a favorable opinion of him and 31 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

<...>

That left Wolf with a 22-point lead over Wagner among likely voters, 52 percent to 30 percent, with 15 percent undecided. Libertarian nominee Ken Krawchuk and Green Party nominee Paul Glover were in low single digits.

Madonna called Trump "an essential motivating force" in the midterm elections. Nearly three in five voters surveyed, 59 percent, held an unfavorable view of the president while 40 percent held a favorable view and 1 percent were undecided. That is driving Democratic enthusiasm, with 49 percent of the likely voters polled supporting Democrats in U.S. House races, and 38 percent supporting Republicans.

Read more: http://www2.philly.com/philly/news/politics/elections/pennsylvania-governor-senate-poll-tom-wolf-scott-wagner-lou-barletta-bob-casey-franklin-marshall-20180927.html

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This Franklin and Marshall Poll closely matches the Reuter's poll posted yesterday, that included similar stats for the PA candidates.

We just have to make sure we GOTV here in PA. From past elections, although this is a "mid-term", there has been a tendency for a somewhat enhanced turnout during gubernatorial elections (although in this case since Wolf has been doing well with his base electorate, that this doesn't cause some complacency - he was able to drive up turnout when he initially ran against Corbett in 2014).

I was heartened to see his and Casey's commercials running here in the Philly market the past week. I saw this last night on MSNBC -

[bucolic_frolic]

1. F&M polls tack to the right as I recall

so this is really really good news

[BumRushDaShow]

2. The school is located here in PA

(Lancaster County - Amish area) and the results seem to mirror and improve upon their August poll.

One of the things that has bothered me is that the media keeps wanting to lump PA into some monolithic pile of states "that voted for Trump" as if they are all uniformly "red", and that is bullshit. He won PA by ~44,000 votes, which was 0.7%, so this was literally a freak result that could and should have gone the other way.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. He spent a lot of time in rural PA

I knew something was going on that didn't make sense. Every last non-voter in blue jeans and a pickup - people who never vote - voted. Don't know if it was word of mouth, campaign cash, churches, or last minute NRA anti-Hillary postcards that turned the trick.

But it was a GOP playbook from the 1920s, as is everything Trump does. The Progressive era was a small and large city movement. Garden clubs, social service organizations, patriotic associations who promoted community, sound business practices that often included company health care, city-manager type government - all worked against corruption. But the KKK and bootlegging and even later Bund were all rural, small town movements. Amazing that those populations - 80 years later - can still be tapped. But once trapped in that environment physically and economically, it is difficult to break from it.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. "Every last non-voter in blue jeans and a pickup - people who never vote - voted."

Exactly. This was a group that were always assumed to be "likely voters" but actually weren't. I posted multiple times after the election, that he was able to get these folks out to vote for the first time.

We talk about and focus on all the "urban voters" who came out for the first time when Obama was running (and then disappeared later) but miss this phenomena of the "rural/small town voters" who came out for the first time and who I expect will also disappear in the future.

[ArizonaLib]

8. I wondered about that too

That GOP 1920's playbook is interesting - I wish information on that time was more prominently available. I always thought that without that progressive movement, there would be no New Deal; that those turn of the century progressives became the source for the 1930's liberals. Bill O'Reilly was always going on about the economic 'success' of the 20's, which obviously didn't make any sense. There were all these progressives, when politicians started winning on getting government out of business, etc., and it never made sense to me, until reading your post.

[Hortensis]

9. The progressives of the '20s WERE the liberals and

the progressive conservatives of the '20s. Both were still found in both of the main parties.

Wilson was a progressive liberal, Teddy progressive conservative, then a conservative run through the '20s until they brought on the Great Depression, then progressive liberals FDR and Truman. Eisenhower was the last openly and proudly progressive conservative president. Nixon enacted progressive legislation but got in trouble with his electorate for it and started wooing social conservatives instead.

After that, of course, the rest of the progressive New Deal era reigned until it ended with Reagan's election, which ushered in this increasingly extreme conservative era.

[bucolic_frolic]

10. I refer you to

"The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State" by James Weinstein. He doesn't delve into the 1920s very far but it is a fascinating if not universally accepted account of how businesses and business organizations (NAM for one) rallied to co-opt radical ideas. While the book doesn't mention it, a few references to klan activities in the NYC area are posted online if you gooooogle enough.

Yest is true the progressives became the New Deal liberals. Progressives were patriotic and community minded AND were staunchly anti-socialist/communist. Many prominent progressive and forward thinking business leaders, even those of national companies, were fighting the spread of communist ideas by providing nascent health care to employees in the form of nurses and worker health functions, time off with pay or pay insurance benefits. All this a delayed response to socialist ideas, circa 1900. But the hotbed of reactionary conservatism was in rural areas, this is where you found moonshiners, fundamentalists, resistance to teaching evolution (Scopes monkey trial).

We tend to paint eras with the dominant ideology. Countless alternatives go underground or hide regionally. The current period strikes me as like the losers of the 1920s flipped into power. In that speculative tangent, Trump is recreating the 1920s he heard about from his dad. Because, you know, reality doesn't matter to him, it's only what goes on in his head that counts.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. "Many prominent progressive and forward thinking business leaders"

Like Henry Ford, who bucked the trend and insisted that his workforce be able to afford to buy the product they made.

In 1914, Henry Ford made a big announcement that shocked the country. It caused the financial editor at The New York Times to stagger into the newsroom and ask his staff in a stunned whisper, “He’s crazy, isn’t he? Don’t you think he’s crazy?”

That morning, Ford would begin paying his employees $5.00 a day, over twice the average wage for automakers in 1914.

In addition, he was reducing the work day from 9 hours to 8 hours, a significant drop from the 60-hour work week that was the standard in American manufacturing.

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-perspective/ford-doubles-minimum-wage.html

Of course this was in lieu of having any ("socialist/communist" ) union and of course he also helped to fund and spread the extremely vile and anti-semetic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

[Cosmocat]

12. I live in a semi-rural setting and work a poll

and I knew Hillary was in trouble before lunch.

People who had not stepped foot into the poll in any of my years of working it were plowing though.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. Hopefully they will disappear again back under their rocks.

[DeminPennswoods]

26. Compared the vote totals of Clinton and Josh Shapiro (Atty Gen)

If Clinton had done no more than match Shapiro's votes in the counties he won, she'd have won the state.

[DeminPennswoods]

25. No, they are weighted to reflect the state's demographics

Terry Madonna knows more about PA state politics than anyone I can think of.

[duforsure]

4. every day trump tweets or talks in public

And the gop promote rapist kavanaugh more people are running from trump and his party now. Its exactly what's needed to insure Democrats retake BOTH houses of Congress. trumps own actions helping a lot , then you have his crazy minions spouting off more stupid statements, making the wave get higher and higher coming at them this Nov. . They're doing it to themselves, and trump is the biggest reason it'll continue to grow bigger. The gop are looking at removing trump too, they just won't say it publicly. They know he's hurt them all badly , and are starting to realize he won't be there long. The gop will turn on trump, eventually.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. "The gop will turn on trump, eventually."

Yes - they are only using him to get their agenda signed off. They have ticked off a bunch of things already - the tax breaks for the wealthy, the elimination of regulations across the board including those related to the environment, and the sounding of the death knell for the ACA. The radical takeover SCOTUS was on the list too.

I always post this because Grover Norquist has been at this for 30 years and summed up what we are seeing right now -

[Harker]

6. My sweetie and I were in CO last time.

We're in PA this time. Ready to go surfin' on a blue wave!

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Much appreciated!!!!

We gotta make sure that Wolf gets back in so that we have a (D) come the 2020 census.

[Harker]

32. We're on it!

[PRETZEL]

11. Also heard on the radio yesterday

that the Republicans aren't spending money on 2 congressional candidates. I know one was Loftus who is running against Conor Lamb and the other is someone from the northeast but can't remember his name.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. I think that it might be (the new) PA-07 with (D) Susan Wild pulling ahead

which encompassed Charile Dent's old (PA-15) gerrymandered seat and the GOP candidate is Marty Nothstein - http://www2.philly.com/philly/news/politics/elections/susan-wild-marty-nothstein-charlie-dent-pennsylvania-7-congressional-district-election-republican-party-20180926.html

With the new map, which now keeps Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton together (vs the original split-up of these urban areas and dilution with redder rural areas), this has changed the seat to blueish.

Charlie Dent's seat -

(old map - with original PA-15)


(new map - with PA-15 replacement now PA-07)

[PRETZEL]

14. Thanks,

It is the new 7th that they were talking about.

[FakeNoose]

24. It's Keith Rothfus - who is running against Connor Lamb in the new 17th

The RNC just gave up on Rothfus and they think he has little chance to beat Lamb.
We're talking about the new 17th District that's northwest of Pittsburgh.

This spring Lamb won in the old 18th district that had already been redrawn (kind of weird) but that gives him incumbency. Rothfus is also an incumbent - but his old district was also redrawn.

We're seeing some strange matchups this November, but I think it's going to work out in our favor.

[DeminPennswoods]

33. Rothfus is still running ads with his own campaign funds

I got a mailer the other day as well.

[apnu]

18. Good. 2020 is up, a census year, its the time to redraw maps

Republicans swept into power in 2010 in state houses all over the country and promptly redrew Congressional maps, gerrymandering at least half the states in Republican favor. (Paul Ryan was a lucky recipient of this process). Now its time again for this. 2020 is a big year. The national election is going to bring out a lot of voters. Which is good for liberals because we struggle to engage our base in midterm years (which 2010 was one). Combine that with an unpopular sitting President running for re-election, 2020 is a huge potential pickup for the Democrats to correct Republican power grabs.

But what if Trump is removed from office before hand by way of impeachment? Pence, or whomever Republican in place, will have that hanging over them which is also in the Democrats favor. Ask Gerald Ford.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. We have to try to take as many governorships and/or state legislatures as we can

between now and 2020.

[apnu]

20. YES! (nt)

[packman]

21. I was devasted that my home state went Repuke

and would be highly pleased to see it don itself back up in its Democratic garb and rejoin its traditional role.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. Agree

First time since 1988 that it went this way. But despite that FACT, the media immediately transformed PA into a "red state".

[FakeNoose]

23. Bob Casey & Tom Wolf are both doing a great job

... and they deserve to be re-elected.
Republican candidates are not very good, and have little chance of unseating the incumbents.
Democrats are doing better in PA now, thanks to the redistricting that happened earlier this year.

Those are the stories the Philadelphia Inquirer should be telling.

[DeminPennswoods]

27. I think the big surprise could be gains

for Dems in the state house and senate.

Here is the LV caveat:

The outcomes of the 2018 mid-terms will be driven by differences in voter turnout among partisans, but likely voter models based on administrative data and self-described interest produce
different results. For example, two in five (37%) voters in the sample have voted in the past three general elections; this would produce an electorate with similar proportions of Republicans (45%) and Democrats (43%). But the electorate would have more Democrats (49%) than Republicans(39%) if self-described intere
st and intention to vote is used to measure turnout.

[DeminPennswoods]

28. The most important problem facing the US?

The winner? Donald Trump (16%) by name!

[Rizen]

29. If Dems could take the Senate in November

That would be amazing. As long as Republicans are in power Trump is above the law.

[BumRushDaShow]

30. It would be great.

We would at least be chairs of the committees and could bring back "regular order".

[RhodeIslandOne]

31. Neither of them had a chance anyhow

But it would be nice to see a 50 point slaughter.