Downtrodden Pa. Dem senator says ‘I wish’ internal campaign polls were higher just weeks away from election
He said the quiet part out loud.
Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey admitted Sunday that his re-election race — and the contest between Dem Vice President Kamala Harris and GOP former President Donald Trump in the swing state — are far closer than public polling shows.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” anchor Alicia Menendez asked Casey whether surveys such as a recent Quinnipiac poll showing him beating Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick by 8 percentage points mimicked his internal campaign numbers.
“I wish they did. Look, polling will bounce around, but we’re in a very close race now,” the Pennsylvania Democrat acknowledged.
“We’re probably in a 2-point race in my race, I think Kamala Harris is about close to that. We’re very much aligned,” he said.
NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd disagreed Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” — suggesting the Democratic senator was even more vulnerable that that, and certainly more than Harris in Pennsylvania.
“There’s something missing for Casey this time,” Todd said. “There’s so much money for McCormick. Casey is being outspent.”
A Senate Republican super PAC dumped $28 million into the race last month in ad buys for McCormick’s campaign after shelling out $24 million in June.
The Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC is spending $47.7 million between Sept. 1 and Election Day on Nov. 5 to help elect Casey, according to Axios.
Among likely Keystone State voters, Harris currently holds a 3 percentage point lead, 50% to 47%, in a head-to-head matchup against Trump, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted earlier this month.
The same survey found Casey ahead of McCormick by 4 percentage points: 48% to 44%.
The RealClearPolitics polling average in Pennsylvania shows Casey with a 3.3% lead and Trump with a 0.1% edge.
But leaked internal polls from the Trump camp suggest he may doing much better than that aggregate, with him performing the best he ever has in at least key battleground states among independent, black and Hispanic voters, as well as voters ages 18 to 44 years old. He is now running double-digit percentage points ahead of where he was in 2020 among those voting groups, the internal polling shows.
The Trump campaign voluntarily released some of its internal surveys in key states Thursday also showing the former president ahead by 5 percentage points in Georgia, 3 points in Arizona and Nevada and 3 point in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
At least one leaked internal poll from Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s campaign in Wisconsin also found Harris was losing to Trump by 3 percentage points in that state, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who is running to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, spilled in a leaked recording from a campaign event that the vice president was “under water” in the state.
Even Democratic former President Barack Obama expressed disappointment about the national state of the Dems’ presidential race while he and Casey were stumping for Harris in Pittsburgh last week.
“We have yet to see the same kinds of energy and turnout in all corners of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama told attendees at a “Black Voters for Harris” event in the city before the Harris rally.