Saturday Presidential Influence Clash Coming to Pennsylvania
(Newsmax/"John Bachman Now")
By Charles Kim | Friday, 04 November 2022 08:51 PM EDT
President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama are scheduled to team up in Philadelphia Saturday to support Democratic candidates Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running for U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Josh Shapiro, while former President Donald Trump stumps in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, for Republican candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for U.S. Senate, and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor of the key swing state, The Hill reported Friday.
"If you look at all of the swing states … Pennsylvania is really the biggest," The Hill reported former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell saying in an interview. "It is a good microcosm of the election. … I think Pennsylvania is the best test. It's the biggest prize and it's going to be purple for a while."
The eleventh hour visits by the three presidents come just days before voters go to the polls in the Keystone State, featuring some of the closely watched midterm races in the country.
The Hill reported Wednesday that Oz passed Fetterman in the polls for the first time, leading by just two percentage points, 48% to 46%, in a survey from Emerson College Polling and The Hill.
The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points, and 4% of those surveyed claimed to be undecided as Election Day looms, according to the report.
Oz, whom Trump has endorsed, has steadily improved five points on Fetterman since September; and 54% of the state's voters now believe he will beat Fetterman in the race, compared to 47% who believe Fetterman will prevail, according to the report.
The change also comes a week after Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke in May, struggled through the only debate with Oz due to some audio processing issues related to the stroke.
"Of those who say they have heard, seen or read a lot about the debate, Oz leads Fetterman 55% to 41%," Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College polling, told The Hill.
The state is garnering national attention because of its seemingly fickle nature, going for Trump in 2016 and then going for Biden in 2020.
While Biden took the state, and effectively the presidency when he won it in 2020, The Hill reports that just 39% of voters approve of the job he has done as president the past two years, with one Republican strategist saying the visit Saturday may prove "too much Biden" to help Democrats in the state.
"At the end of the day, too much Joe Biden," the national Republican strategist told the news outlet when asked about the visit. "Nobody needs any more Joe Biden. Wrong message. Wrong messenger. I can't imagine how that's helping anybody in Pennsylvania if you're a Democrat."
Democrats, on the other hand, are excited to see the Obama-Biden team back together again.
"People are going to see the Obama-Biden duo again," one Democratic operative told The Hill. "That's a valuable image."