Now two days after the 2024 general election, the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race between GOP challenger David McCormick and incumbent three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey has not been called yet, with ballots still being counted.
Both campaigns are projecting their respective candidates to win, though McCormick claims a razor-thin lead over Casey.
According to Decision Desk HQ, as of Thursday afternoon, McCormick is up by 0.5 percent (30,997 votes) with 97 percent of the vote in.
On X, Decision Desk HQ explained why they have not yet projected a winner in the race "as we are still awaiting votes from Cambria County and further information on the number of provisional ballots statewide." The account stressed that "we follow the data" and "[o]nce we have sufficient data to project an outcome in this race, we will do so."
Deep-red Cambria County is still outstanding due in large part to Election Day issues with scanning ballots. Many Pennsylvanians had left the county's polling locations without voting during the in-precinct scanning situation. A court-ordered emergency extension kept the county's polls open two hours past when Pennsylvania's polling sites closed. However, any ballots cast after 8 p.m. were considered provisional votes, which have to be verified by election officials before being counted.
McCormick's campaign released a statement Thursday declaring, "While votes continue to be counted, any way you slice it, Dave McCormick will be the next United States Senator from Pennsylvania." The statement cites "ruby red" Cambria County as a foreteller of victory.
McCormick campaign statement on the outcome of #PASen: pic.twitter.com/5dxCasREiV
— Elizabeth Gregory (@eliz_gregory) November 7, 2024
Casey's campaign, meanwhile, says they're "confident that at the end of that process, Senator Casey will be re-elected." The statement also notes that the vote margin is narrow enough to trigger a recount — within half a point, the threshold for automatic recounts in Pennsylvania, according to state law.
Statement from Casey campaign on the vote count in #PASen: pic.twitter.com/1YDfQt1PtG
— Maddy McDaniel (@maddymcdaniel14) November 7, 2024
According to York-based FOX 43, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, would have to order a recount by 5:00 p.m. on November 14. The recount would then have to be completed by November 26.
Three third-party candidates also appeared on the ballot and captured a relatively significant chunk of the vote (a combined 2.5 percent), which could make all the difference in who wins between the two major political parties.
To thwart his Republican rival in an apparent effort to split the vote, one of Casey's campaign ads suggested that he seemed fine with voters casting their ballots for his third-party foes, so long as they don't choose McCormick. The video, titled "Four Candidates," only crossed out the GOP Senate hopeful's face, implying that Casey was okay with the Libertarian Party's John Thomas and Constitution Party candidate Bernard "Marty" Selker taking what would presumably be McCormick's votes.
According to Politico, a Democrat-tied super PAC aired an anti-McCormick attack ad aimed at luring crucial conservative votes away from the Republican nominee by boosting Selker's chances.
Left-wing political action committee Defend Our Constitution spent at least $370,000 to run a TV campaign commercial calling Selker "the choice for true conservatives." Per Politico, "Defend Our Constitution did not file with the Federal Election Commission until late September. It used a Democratic media firm, Old Town Media, to purchase air time, and its filings show that it has paid Public Policy Polling for polling and Wavelength Strategies for ads — both Democratic-aligned firms [...] Selker, a truck driver, has raised only $11,000 as of the end of September. He has not aired any ads for himself."
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