Pennsylvania voters will send Dave McCormick to Washington after all.
The Republican businessman denied Democrat Bob Casey Jr. a third term in the U.S. Senate by less than 32,000 votes, with 99% of ballots counted.
Neither candidate had yet to make a statement as of early Thursday evening. In the minutes after The Associated Press called the race, a Casey spokeswoman said thousands of overseas and provisional ballots remain uncounted.
The flip pads the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to 53-45, with races in Arizona and Nevada still to be called, according to The AP.
Republicans won the White House on Tuesday, and early evening Thursday they were on pace to keep the House of Representatives, unless Democrats won 20 of the final 27 races still to be called for the 218 majority of the 435-member body.
It’s a hard-fought victory for McCormick, who narrowly missed the party’s nomination to Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2022 to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. Democrat John Fetterman won the race by nearly 5 percentage points.
The Grand Old Party took a beating in the midterm cycle two years ago when voters headed to the ballot box just four months removed from the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
This time around, McCormick stood opposed to a nationwide abortion ban, though he spent most of his campaign painting Casey as an out-of-touch career politician who stood by while the Biden administration’s spending policies set inflation on fire.
Much like President-elect Donald Trump, McCormick promised change through immigration reform and economic revival. He spent most of the last seven months campaigning from a tour bus that traversed the state as he tried to connect with working class voters struggling to pay bills.
It didn’t work quite as well as it did for his new boss at the top of the ticket. While Trump managed to flip Erie and Bucks counties – one along the eponymous great lake and the other on the New Jersey border, north of Philadelphia – McCormick did not have the same luck.
Charlie Gerow, a longtime Republican analyst, told The Center Square on Wednesday that he wasn’t surprised that the race came in so close. Unseating an incumbent senator, with a well-stocked war chest, is difficult work. Though he believes McCormick did it well.
“Certainly, Donald Trump helped, but Dave McCormick really helped himself,” he said.
