FL/OH/PA Quinnipiac: Close races everywhere

[Heisenberg]

McGinty doing much better than I expected.

I'm guessing it's a post-primary effect. The race will be close.

[Heisenberg]

If this poll is accurate, this is terrible news for Toomey and (especially) Strickland. They should be outperforming Trump by a lot. I still think PA is Lean R for now, but clearly Toomey isn't as safe as some earlier polls suggested. FL will probably be up in the air until the primary.

Do you mean Portman?

One thing this poll found was that Strickland had a higher percentage of people viewing him unfavorably. However, a lot of people also said they didn't know enough about Portman to have an opinion of him. That's good for Portman in that he can make inroads with some of them, but it's bad at the same time because he lags in name recognition and those people may not like him. Anyway, I say PA Tilts R at the moment, FL will lean R with Grayson as the Democratic nominee, tossup with Murphy as the Democratic nominee. Ohio is a a pure tossup right now.

[Heisenberg]

Take it with a grain of salt, but a family friend who is a top lobbyist for Boeing (among other companies) and extremely well-connected with Portman's office said that Portman thinks he'll lose and that the Portman camp's last internal had Strickland up by four points.  They're planning to flood the airwaves, but don't think anything short of dead girl/live boy will tarnish Strickland's brand in Appalachia while the suburbs and cities will be brutal due to Trump and Presidential turnout respectively. 

Wow, that's surprising. Even if Trump loses nationally, I still expect him to do very well in OH. Are there that many potential Trump/Strickland voters? I really thought Portman would be able to beat Strickland quite handily... Strickland has a pretty terrible record as governor, IIRC.

Oh, my gosh. Usually Portman and Strickland are neck and neck, sometimes Portman even a little ahead. I know that Strickland's record as governor was bad, and Republicans are attacking it, but I know Strickland and the Clintons are close. I also believe he heavily campaigned for Hillary in 2008. I really have no clue as to how the presidential race affects this race, TBH, but I thought Portman would still outperform Trump, and I had this race as Lean R for a while. I guess it's now a toss up.