An article recently published by national polling website FiveThirtyEight found that while most states are unlikely to find a new party taking over the Governor’s chair in 2014, Pennsylvania was ranked as the most likely to see a switch in the state’s highest office.
Dating back to the early months of 2013, the security of incumbent Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett began to appear unstable. In the past year, Gov. Corbett’s approval ratings have continued to drop and as a result, he has received the title of “most vulnerable governor” from national prognosticators.
Author Harry Enten is asserting that Tom Wolf is not merely leading Corbett, but actually went so far as to declare that Wolf is “crushing” Corbett in the early polls. His analysis indicates that at the present moment the Democratic nominee has an 89% chance of winning the election.
The article is primarily focused on data collected over the past 8 years on gubernatorial races “without a major third-party candidate and with at least one poll in the field from January through June of the election year.” By comparing the results predicted by early poll numbers and the actual results, Enten was able to learn the degree to which early polls are accurate.
What he found was that early polls are quite reliable, with the article stating that “of the 84 (gubernatorial) races since 2006 with available data, the average error between early polling and the election results was just under 7 percentage points…the candidate leading in early polling has won 91.6 percent of the time.”
Now there are still over five months left to election day, which can be an eternity in politics. Nonetheless, this article demonstrates that once public favor begins to turn it can be difficult to win it back. Gov. Corbett will focus his energies for the rest of this year on doing just that.
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13 Responses
Can Tom Corbett’s team be trusted to negotiate a healthcare agreement between UPMC and Highmark? The conflicts are glaring. Kathleen Kane keep the Corbett Team out of Healthcare honey pot!!! Governor creates a team to address UPMC, Highmark dispute – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2014/06/02/Governor-Corbett-announced-a-team-to-address-Highmark-and-UPMC-dispute/stories/201406020126
THE BRABENDER-CORBETT CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD OR WESTERN PA HEALTH CARE WARS: As has been often reported, there is a war in Western PA between Highmark and UPMC. These large institutions control the majority of the Western PA healthcare market: UPMC from the provider side and Highmark from the insurance side. The public is being scared to death. It wants open access to health care providers in the region; employers want cost containment. While UPMC and Highmark are both state-regulated, standing in the honey pot of this controversy are Corbett administration officials and advisors. Gromis-Baker is the wife of Scotty Baker, the head of Government affairs for World Class Jeff Romoff of UPMC. The rumored strategic political advisor and producer of those wonderful Highmark ads telling the truth about the UPMC system is the Brabender-Cox team supposedly led by former long-time Corbett Chief of Staff Baby Brain Nutt. Considering the number of taxpayers and voters that buy health insurance in Western PA, isn’t this conflict of interest, breach of the public trust and lack of transparency by the Corbett Administration far worse than Christie’s Bridgegate scandal? Quite frankly, I’m sick of the Post-Gazette, asking Corbett to solve this healthcare war, while both sides buy thousands and thousands of dollars of ads. If what I’ve been hearing is true, the Tom Corbett Administration cannot resolve the UPMC-Highmark wars, until Tom and Sue Corbett stop allowing their top political advisors to enrich themselves at the expense of Tom Corbett’s very survival and that of the voters and taxpayers in Western Pennsylvania. It will probably take some firings to resolve these terrible conflict of interests in the Corbett Administration, but as Brabender said himself about Christie, “sometimes the public likes a tough guy.”
Isaac L.
Since I received no money, (not even two-bits), I think I’m pretty far from a “whore” definition.
But, Neutralin2014 is smack dab in the middle of the definition of being a liar.
Neutralin2014 – 1. That would be a $1,000 whore, not one that only costs two bits. A bit, as you are evidently not aware, is an antiquated unit of money equal to 1/8 of a dollar, thus two bits is 25 cents. 25 cents is 4,000 times smaller than $1,000 – your math was way off.
2. Someone who pretends to be an objective observer whilst on someone else’s payroll is not necessarily a whore – you’ve failed to create any logical steps to go from definition to term, which is not to say that one could not be both. So far as I am aware, there is no specific term for that in the English language.
neutralin2014-
Your statement is 100% false. I’ve never received any money from the Wolf campaign, for consulting or anything else. In fact, I gave the campaign a few hundred a shortly after McCord’s attacks, since I felt the Wolf campaign was forced to spend additional money defending itself from unfairness.
Back up your claim by posting a link to a report that shows I was sent or I received any money from Wolf campaign. I know you can’t.
Second of all, I got into several arguments with Schwartz staffers and supporters claiming
1) Schwartz’s ground campaign would dazzle and amaze everyone with its power and effectiveness
2) that the 32% undecided was larger than the gap between her and Wolf so she had a chance to win with her ground game. They were arguing how they had called 250,000 voters and after they heard the pitch were switching to Schwartz in droves. (Of course I pointed out all these calls preceded the polls that they were claiming were going to close as a result of the calls.)
In reality the ground game was flat, and Schwartz didn’t beat Wolf in a single county, and she did as well as McCord overall. Wolf got nearly 50% of the vote in Philly.
I don’t know whether David Diano actually has a job. But I do know that his McCord or Wolf agonizing was a lot of hooey. He took a $1000 consulting fee from the Wolf campaign weeks ago. (You can look it up.)
Now, David, you know what someone who pretends to be an objective observer but is on someone’s pay roll is? A whore. And you know what someone who sells their opinion for $1000 is? A two-bit whore.
But considering how uniformed and dishonest your views are generally–Allyson Schwartz did have a substantial field operation but no one on her campaign ever said or would say it could overcome a huge deficit–that’s about what they are worth.
Fake-Liberal-Lion-
1) I liked McCord and was prepared to vote for him until he made that racial attack (which was actually quite “interesting”). Even though I had planned to vote for him and thought he had a great technical skill set to be Gov, it was obvious several months ago that he wasn’t getting any traction and Wolf would be the nominee. I had resigned myself to McCord as 2nd place (until he shot his campaign in the foot).
2) Specter isn’t very interesting these days (as he died more than a year and a half ago).
3) Sestak is still terrible excuse for a Democrat. If he loses in 2016, I predict he will sell off his PA house and drop the pretense of PA residency.
Questioner-
“No need to get defensive” ???
Gee, considering your (supposed) basis for the question, why am I not surprised. A least you won your bet.
There’s no need to get defensive, David. I was just trying to win a bet against someone who was trying to tell me you are 50 but still live with your parents. I knew that couldn’t be right. Thanks for your answer.
@Questioner…….David’s job is to keep supporting uninteresting people like McCord and Specter and to trash Sestak every chance he gets. Lol.
Questioner:
Yes I do.
I do software consulting, but I work odd hours.
Sometimes I post while I’m stuck waiting for programs to run, or in a boring meeting that I’ve been dragged into, or at a restaurant waiting for my meal, or during a commercial break when watching TV.
I’m online A LOT and PoliticsPA is one of my go-to sites that is always open in a browser tab.
I’m curious, David. Do you have a job?
Corbett may as well start packing his personal items and go ahead and move out of the mansion… give all his Big Donor money back to his buddies.. his goose is burning on the grill! see ya’ Tom.. it’s been swell knowing ya’ .. NOT!!
89% is huge.
I’m sure the Schwartz people think that Corbett can overcome that with a ground campaign like theirs.
We can only hope that his ground campaign is that bad.