PA: Muhlenberg/MC: Sestak 40/Toomey 48 (10/24-10/27) DO NOT ENTER UNTIL 27 DROPS

[minionofmidas]

IIRC this race's polls always had a surprising lot of undecideds.

[minionofmidas]

It's a mistake to think Santorum lost only because he was "too extreme" for Pennsylvania.  Moderate Republican Icon Mike DeWine lost in Neighboring Ohio by only a slightly smaller margin, and Ohio is slightly more Republican.

You must be confusing DeWine with Voinovich. DeWine was a generic bushbot. Not an ideological uberconservative like Toomey is and Santorum talked like he was (and paid a price for it), but not a moderate by any standard either.

Lifetime ACU ratings (why not?) Voinovich 70 (same as Lisa Murkowski btw), DeWine 80 (or comparable to Frank Murkowski ).

[minionofmidas]

a Hard-core Social Conservative

Moderate Republican Icon

...

(Oh and, the actual story here is that Bob Casey wasn't as strong a candidate as his early boosters made him out to be - which became quite apparent during the campaign - he probably would have lost to an incumbent capable of attracting crossover support, which Santorum never was, beyond the bare minimum needed to win election as an R in PA - and that a very unpopular Governor dragged DeWine down with him... which became easier because DeWine wasn't any sort of icon of any sort for anybody but basically Generic R. Perception being Reality in these things, of course.)

[minionofmidas]

Indeed, ideology certainly didn't doom DeWine. Genericity did him in. (That includes an inability to make the narrative about the fact that Brown is quite liberal.)

Oh, and as to the last sentence: No. Just no. Casey vs Santorum was the big one in PA that year. Not seriously contested races like Rendell's that year do not really have coattails.
In Ohio, Taft was the big story, Ney was a big story, general Republican corruption was a big story. DeWine couldn't break that narrative. It was a perfectly unnecessary defeat, if you will.

I note from your profile that you were 15 in 2006. Tell me, did you follow those elections in any detail?

[minionofmidas]

Casey wasn't strong on personality but he's always strong on name.

Well, yeah.

That means a lot more here

Seriously? Citation needed.

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Compared to what? To a paper candidate? Obviously. Utterly obviously. He was a "star candidate", handpicked to take out a high-profile, obviously vulnerable but not obviously doomed, incumbent, after all.
Compared to how strong he was made out to be? Not really. (Also obvious that early polls tend to be more name-dependent than final results.) Still good enough for an unendangered win in 2006's climate, of course.

[minionofmidas]

Seriously? Citation needed.

Come on. When you're a Casey in Pennsylvania, it's like being a Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Probably worth more, nowadays, actually.

But hey, in Arizona it's enough to be a goddam Quayle. Compared to that PA is doing good.

(My point was about the relative benefits of a huge name in Pennsylvania as vs. other states, not about the relative size of the Casey name compared to other names. Anyways, I don't think we disagree much. Especially seeing as how my views on the race were partially shaped by your discussions with other posters. )

[minionofmidas]

But hey, in Arizona it's enough to be a goddam Quayle.

Not really. Quayle entered the race as a second-tier candidate seen as having little chance. He surged after releasing an ad that consisted of not much more than him saying "Barack Obama is the worst President in history." It went viral among the nutjobs, he raised tons of money, and won a plurality in a very divided primary. Even in the primary his name clearly hurt him and he only got where he was by tapping into idiotic anti-Obama sentiment (please note that I am not saying all anti-Obama sentiment is idiotic, just what he tapped into.)

Heh, don't confuse me with irrelevant detail.