The one certainty from pollsters on both sides of the aisle going into this election was that inflation, crime and the border were on the top of mind of voters. The missing piece was that while voters said unequivocally in exit polls they did not care for President Joe Biden, they loathed Mr. Trump more. As he bragged about his purported influence during rallies in the last days of the campaign and hinted at announcing his 2024 candidacy, independent voters who were breaking for Republicans stopped dead in their tracks — some of them stubbornly remaining in their cars.
Mr. Oz, along with Jeremy Shaffer who was running for the 17th congressional district, were unable to shake off the association with Mr. Trump and Mr. Mastriano — despite running two very good campaigns — and fell as a result.
They weren’t the only ones. It appears that in Pennsylvania this cycle was a Blue Wave: the exact opposite of what happened here in 2020, where down ballot Republicans succeeded across the board, despite losing the top of the ballot to Mr. Biden.
Former Democratic state party chair T.J. Rooney said he has whiplash trying to define what the message is coming out of the 2020 and 2022 election cycles — because both of them are upside down: “I think the biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s election is that voters really don’t like a lot of their choices, and so they do things we don’t expect them to do.”
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