A new poll conducted by a firm called Public Opinion Strategies for an organization called Pittsburgh Works Together found John Fetterman, who is the Democratic pick for Senate in Pennsylvania, 18 percentage points ahead of general election challenger and Trump endorsement-recipient Mehmet Oz, aka Dr. Oz.
When the respondents behind these numbers were asked which candidate they would support in the Senate race, a full 51 percent selected Fetterman, while just 33 percent picked Oz, who the Fetterman campaign characterizes as essentially out-of-touch with everyday Pennsylvanians. A full 15 percent didn’t provide an initial response, and when asked a follow-up question of which candidate they’d lean towards supporting, three percent of the overall total leaned towards Oz, and one percent indicated a lean towards Fetterman. Factoring in those who lean towards one of the candidates gives Fetterman 52 percent of the overall total and Oz 36 percent — meaning Fetterman remains substantially ahead of the Republican.
This poll isn’t the first to find Fetterman far ahead of Oz in the Pennsylvania race. The Democratic contender, who currently serves as the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, leads Oz by over 10 percent in the weighted average of polls in the race maintained by FiveThirtyEight, an elections data and analysis site. From Monday to Tuesday of this week, the Fetterman campaign said it raised over half a million bucks, furthering the Democratic pick’s already present fundraising advantage against Oz.
Fetterman saw that funding surge around the time a video of Oz went viral depicting the Republican complaining about the prices for crudité, which is a vegetable dish. As outlined in a New York article about the internet conversation surrounding the video, the clip doesn’t exactly bolster Oz’s supposed bona fides as a wannabe champion for everyday Pennsylvanians. In the clip, Oz claimed that a single head of broccoli costs $2, but the price was $2 a pound. Does Oz know how to shop for groceries?
The point of the attention-grabbing video was evidently to lodge some complaint about inflation. The Pennsylvania Senate race is likely one of the brightest spots for Democrats on this year’s midterm elections map, particularly on the Senate side. In Florida, a recent poll from the University of North Florida found likely general election contender Rep. Val Demings (D) ahead of incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R), but Florida polling is mixed. Overall, Florida was one of the comparatively few locales in the 2020 presidential election where Trump nabbed a higher share of the two-party vote than he did in 2016, so it’s not just gerrymandering making the state lean Republican — although like with other jurisdictions featuring Republicans in charge of the redistricting process that’s also a problem. However, polling indicates that Rubio seems less popular, including among Republicans, than the state’s GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, so even Florida’s tilt towards the GOP might not save him.
New poll conducted by GOP firm Public Opinion Strategies for Pittsburgh Works Together shows big leads for Dems in the PA Senate and governors races. Fetterman up 18 points over Oz; Shapiro up 15 points over Mastriano pic.twitter.com/K3lo8YME03
— Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) August 16, 2022
