Pennsylvania officials say there is a minimum of 100,000 ballots left to be processed after The Associated Press projected businessman Dave McCormick unseated Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in one of the most contested Senate races in the country.
“Throughout the day, the Department has communicated with counties who continue to conduct a secure election where every eligible vote is counted,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said in a Nov. 7 statement on social media platform X. “We estimate there are at least 100,000 ballots remaining to be adjudicated, including provisional, military, overseas, and Election Day votes. We urge patience as election workers continue to do this important work, especially in contests where the margins are very close.”
The current vote count has McCormick with 3.34 million votes to Casey’s 3.31 million.
The Associated Press and other outlets earlier on Thursday projected McCormick as the winner over Casey.
The news agency said it called the race because there were not enough outstanding votes from areas that Casey was winning for him to end up as the victor.
With so many ballots left to count, Casey said that he would not yet concede to his opponent.
“I have dedicated my life to making sure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard, whether on the floor of the Senate or in a free and fair election,” he said on X. “It has been made clear there are more than 100,000 votes still to be counted. Pennsylvania is where our democratic process was born. We must allow that process to play out and ensure that every vote that is eligible to be counted will be counted. That is what Pennsylvania deserves.”
McCormick after the projected win said he was looking forward to representing Pennsylvania in the Senate.
“I am honored and excited to represent EVERY Pennsylvanian as our next Senator,” he wrote on X.
If the projected win holds, Republicans would have at least 53 seats in the upper chamber in the next Congress after spending four years in the minority.
Races in Nevada and Arizona have yet to be called.
Casey, 64, defeated incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in 2006 and won reelection in 2012 and 2018. This year was the first time he was on the same ballot as President-elect Donald Trump, for whom a majority of Pennsylvanians voted.
McCormick, 59, tried for Pennsylvania’s other Senate seat in 2022 but lost in the GOP primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who went on to lose to Democrat John Fetterman.
Fetterman took to X on Thursday to say that the new race should not have been called with so many ballots left to process.
“We still have tens of thousands of votes to be counted across the Commonwealth,” he said.
Under Pennsylvania law, an automatic recount will take place if the final margin is less than or equal to 0.5 percent of the total number of votes cast.
From The Epoch Times