I wonder if Oz being a Turk was a factor. Americans of Greek, Serbian or Armenian ancestry might find it hard to vote for a Turk, but I don’t know if there are sufficient numbers of them in Pennsylvania to matter (or ones who don’t automatically vote Democrat anyway).
I don’t think Oz’s ethnicity cost him.. a vote here and there probably, but a major factor in his loss?
He lost by 3%... that wasn’t what cost him.
He was just a completely off brand candidate, period.
As a Republican in PA to win state wide, you need to run up the score in the rural areas, period... Those areas are blue collar working class folks largely... Some carpetbagger guy showing up in $2000 Italian loafers pretending he’s one of them, is completely off brand... and not going to sell.
That’s exactly what happened... Oz got an amazing gift with Fetterman’s stroke, otherwise he’d have lost by 6 to 8.
Run a crap candidate, get a crap result.... OZ was just a crap candidate.
"I wonder if Oz being a Turk MUSLIM was a factor."
Man what a pisser. Not saying this made the difference, I haven't gotten that far down into the PA-thetic voting demos yet.
I get not voting for Bishop Romney (even though I did) because Planet Kolub and white underwear -- both reasonable objections -- but Oz is patently obviously the most secular, most civic, most American, most domesticated Muslim in the US. I'm going by birth Muslim as opposed to one of these n-rich cRappers who converted in prison lol.
So, Oz consolidated his PA primary win, if you take the total GOP primary candidate outlay of votes it nearly comes to 1.25M, so I expected him to double that in the general election and sure enough: 2,459,060 votes (with 95% reporting).
Strokegoitermann consolidates his primary win, 1.283M -- almost less than Oz to the margin of Oz's 'loss' -- but magically also acquires not only the primary deficit, but juuuust enough extra votes to edge Oz at 2,640,056.
In all likelihood, it's cheating (since cheating can be targeted to any number), but it is also likely to some smaller degree, the over- >50 cohort who just won't vote for a Muslim. And I will not judge them for that -- there are almost surely service people in that group who did the Iraq cf and my allegiance is with service members all day every day.
Nah...those old enmities go back a hundred years, but are irrelevant now, with all the intermarrying throughout four generations.