Friday, October 29, 2010

Lee Fisher

In the wake of near-certain defeat, Lee Fisher, Democratic Senate nominee in Ohio, has turned over $100,000 of his money to the state Democratic Party. He ought to be thanked for making sure that the ship wouldn't go down with him. Current polling can be seen at right. If only Kendrick Meek could learn by example.

I haven't been following this race very closely. What exactly happened here? Some kind of huge divergence opened up in August and just kept getting wider. Was there some major news event, or did Fisher's campaign do something dumb, or what?

3 comments:

Blue said...

I think you'll find the Republican increased and the Dem waned at around the same time in PA and WI. Just in the other seats the Republican is flawed enough that the race went from lean Dem to lean GOP. In OH it went from tossup to likely GOP.

Or we can all start believing that foreign money bought this election, if we want to hate on democracy.

Neil Sinhababu said...

I've looked at a couple other states, and no place has effects over that time frame quite this drastic. August is generally a bad month for Democrats, but the time period from then to the present usually doesn't involve the Republican adding 15 points to his lead.

Frank Wilhoit said...

There may not be a state with a wider and more bitter gulf between the Democratic Party establishment and the progressive base than Ohio. Fisher is a boring and ineffectual campaigner with a long track record of failure. The Ohio Democratic Party brutally strongarmed his primary victory over a much better candidate, thereby permanently alienating many progressives. So there is a huge enthusiasm gap in this race -- which, by the way, there is not in the other statewide races.