New polling conducted by YouGov for CBS News reinforces how wide the gap in perceptions is between the two candidates.
When supporters of either candidate were asked whether they were glad their candidate won the nomination, three-quarters of Fetterman supporters said yes — 40 points more than said the same about Oz. Fetterman also has a 27-point advantage when supporters were asked whether they’re very enthusiastic about voting for him.
It goes on. Fetterman has a 30-point advantage on having the right experience among all respondents. A 14-point advantage when respondents were asked whether they liked how the candidates handled themselves. Nearly a 30-point advantage on saying what he really believes.
But on the most important question — who people plan to vote for — Fetterman’s advantage is far more modest. In the CBS-YouGov poll, he leads by only 5 points.
Why? Well, consider the responses when pollsters asked what was spurring the respondents’ support. Most Fetterman voters said they liked Fetterman. Most Oz voters said … they didn’t like Fetterman.
That’s a great example of negative partisanship: casting a vote not for a candidate but against one. This tendency was enormously useful for Democrats in the past two election cycles, with the party gaining a majority after 2018 and the White House after 2020 largely because Americans were frustrated with Donald Trump. Now, it’s probably helping keep Oz afloat.
There’s some good old-fashioned regular partisanship in there too, of course. About a third of Oz supporters say they back him because he’s the Republican. (About a fifth of Fetterman supporters also point to party.) Clearly, though, the distinction between “voting for him because he’s a Republican” and “voting for him because he’s not the Democrat” is often subtle. What do Oz voters not like about Fetterman that makes them want to vote against him? Is it extricable from his policy positions?
One of the most important questions about the November election is who will come out to vote. (I mean, obviously, but bear with me.) If Fetterman supporters are far more excited about voting for him, that might mean that some sliver of them turn out who might not otherwise — and if Oz voters are less enthusiastic, the opposite dynamic might be at play. But while Democrats and Republicans often make up about the same share of the possible voter pool, Republicans have in recent elections made up less of the pool of nonvoters.
In other words, Republicans tend to be more reliable voters than Democrats, so they might justifiably be less concerned about any drop-off in enthusiasm. In 2016, Trump won in large part because in enough places enough people who didn’t really like him came out to vote for him anyway, often because they disliked Hillary Clinton that much.
None of which is to suggest that Fetterman isn’t in the enviable position here. In general, you want to be winning and not losing (again: obviously) but support for Fetterman goes a bit deeper than that. Republican hopes for victory in the state might understandably depend at this point on hoping that partisanship — positive or negative — inspires people to go to the polls and vote for Oz.
At this point, this poll suggests, the biggest thing Oz has going for him is that he’s a Republican running against John Fetterman.
