John Fetterman, the Democrat who’s Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and his party’s pick for Senate in the state, is leading Trump endorsement-recipient Mehmet Oz, aka Dr. Oz, by 11 percent, according to a new Fox poll revealing registered Pennsylvania voters’ opinions.
Forbes identifies the lead for Fetterman in the Fox survey as the biggest found in any major survey dealing with the race thus far. In the poll, 47 percent of respondents went with Fetterman, while 36 percent indicated support for Oz. There’s a notable difference in the level of the enthusiasm behind the respective campaigns: a full 68 percent of Fetterman’s supporters indicated they “enthusiastically” backed him. For Oz, just 35 percent of his supporters shared the same sentiment about their preferred candidate. Over half of overall respondents indicated some level of concern about whether Oz was sufficiently familiar with Pennsylvania to effectively carry out the role he’s seeking.
Although the Fetterman lead found in this Fox poll is larger than his leads elsewhere, other polls are finding the Democratic lieutenant governor ahead of Oz. A recent survey from Blueprint Polling, for instance, found Fetterman with a lead of 9 percent, garnering 49 percent of the support compared to just 40 percent for Oz. As reported on this site, Fetterman is significantly out-raising his Republican challenger. In the second quarter of this year, Fetterman raised $11 million, and Oz, meanwhile, raised just $3.8 million in the same period, with most of that money — a full $2.2 million of it — a loan from the Republican contender himself. What he brought in from outside donors was thus substantially lower, totaling some $1.6 million. Oz also provided millions of his own money in support of his barely successful primary campaign. He won over runner-up Dave McCormick by under 1,000 votes.
The Pennsylvania Senate race would be a flip if Fetterman wins: the seat for which he and Oz are running is the one currently held by retiring Republican Pat Toomey. It is also one of the Senate seats most able to be flipped among those going on the ballot this year, observers believe: the Cook Political Report calls the race in Pennsylvania a toss-up (one of two races with currently GOP-held seats it rates that way) and Decision Desk HQ estimates Fetterman holds an over 60 percent chance of winning. Joe Biden won the state of Pennsylvania in the 2020 election, and its current governor and other Senator are already Democrats, but it’s been said Democrats might struggle politically in the midterms, and outcomes obviously aren’t certain.
Fox also released new polling numbers this week showing incumbent Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock ahead of Trump-backed Republican challenger Herschel Walker by four percent. Although it’s not a surefire way to judge a candidate, in the context of the troubling potential of adding two Trump lackeys to the Senate it’s worth noting neither Oz nor Walker possess any experience in elected office, although they want to become one of the 100 and sometimes 101 people deciding on urgent matters of national security and support for Americans. One could imagine that, in this context, the duo’s lack of experience would help facilitate them funneling familiar, far-right extremism into their potential Senate work. Conjecturally, they’re not committed to records of service they don’t have — they’re committed to politics.
