With Pennsylvania votes still being counted early Wednesday, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick appeared at his campaign party in a Pittsburgh hotel at 1 a.m. to tell supporters that his campaign believes he is on the road to victory.
But McCormick stopped short of declaring himself the winner in his campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey when he spoke at the Fairmont Hotel, Downtown.
McCormick leads vote counting Wednesday morning by about 52,000 votes, or less than 1%, but that was too close for the Associated Press to declared a winner as of 10:00 a.m. Wednesday.
In his speech early Wednesday morning, McCormick underlined the hard work he said he put in to get to such a close result.
"We have been so honored to campaign across Pennsylvania — 450 visits in every little town and every city," he said.
During those visits, he said, the people he met gave him and his wife Dina Powell hope.
"They've given us faith. They've given us courage to want to represent and serve the great people of our commonwealth," he said. "It'll be the honor of our lifetimes."
On Wednesday morning Casey's campaign spokesperson Maddy McDaniel claimed that they see a path to victory. “There are more votes that need to be counted in areas like Philadelphia and it’s important that every legal ballot will be counted," McDaniel said. "When that happens we are confident the Senator will be re-elected.”
Republicans have already won a majority in the Senate with at least 52 seats, picking up seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. That means President-elect Donald Trump will have an easier time installing his cabinet appointments and appointing judges, including any vacancies on the Supreme Court.
But the outcome of of the Pennsylvania Senate race will continue to have impact in 2026, when Democrats will try to win back the Senate—and which will be much more difficult if Casey loses. The Senate races in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan are also too close to call as of Wednesday morning but Democrats held small leads in those states. In addition to McCormick, Republican Sam Brown of Nevada holds a small lead in that Senate race.
A couple of hours before McCormick's speech, Casey had ended his party in Scranton without speaking. Paige Cognetti, a Casey ally and the mayor of Scranton — the city in which Casey was born, raised and launched his political career — spoke on his behalf to say Casey still thinks he has a path to victory. But she told partygoers just before midnight to go home in hopes that a result would become clear on Wednesday.
"Tonight is a long night and I think we have another long day ahead of us tomorrow," she said. "We are confident that when all the votes are counted Senator Casey is going to be back in D.C. fighting for us."
Because of the key role in picking justices, the issue of abortion played a prominent role in the campaign in the wake of the Dobbs decision that overturned the right to an abortion in 2022. The economy and immigration were also important — but sometimes got overshadowed by the candidates’ personal attacks on each other’s records.
McCormick sought to portray Casey as a do-nothing politician who had served 18 years in the Senate and had few legislative victories. Casey attacked McCormick for leading a wealthy hedge fund that sometimes invested in China and for giving a misleading picture of his record as CEO of a company in Pittsburgh.
Casey led in the polls since the race began, but in the last two months of the election the polls tightened within the margin of error in many polls and Cook Political Report rated the race a tossup. While a couple of polls showed McCormick in the lead down the home stretch, dozens of polls showed Casey continuing to hold a small lead.
In the early days of the race, Casey attacked McCormick for spending most of his time with his family in Connecticut. But as McCormick had more time to explain his childhood and work experience in Pennsylvania, the arguments in the race shifted to particular issues.
Casey’s campaign emphasized issues on which McCormick’s campaign attacked him. Casey ran ads saying that he was tough on the border and wanted to pass a bipartisan border security deal, even picturing himself next to the border wall. Casey also spent months talking about his plans to take on corporations for price-gouging in order to reduce inflation.
Abortion was the main issue Casey used to attack McCormick. All the way to the end of the campaign — including an appearance in Wilkinsburg on Friday — Casey appeared with abortion groups and advocates who said that abortion rights were on the line.
“It isn't some theory or some constitutional debate about the finer points of the law,” Casey said on Friday, standing next to two women who cited personal experiences and said proposed Republican abortion laws would leave them vulnerable. “It's about human beings, about women who are living in a different world than we were living in just a few years ago.”
McCormick said his background as a CEO and a military veteran gave him special insight into the economy and foreign affairs. In Western Pennsylvania, McCormick emphasized the need to support the natural gas industry and attacked the Biden administration for even considering future limits on the industry. And McCormick said that threats from China and Russia meant the country needed to make a massive increase in military spending.
Neither Casey nor McCormick has highlighted major areas of disagreement with their party, with a couple of notable exceptions. McCormick supports Ukraine’s war effort in a way that has contrasted with Trump’s statements about its war with Russia. Casey at times has urged the Biden administration to be more supportive of the local natural gas industry, particularly around exporting natural gas and supporting hydrogen energy that can be made with local natural gas.
Still, McCormick made a last-minute appeal to Republicans who are uncomfortable with Donald Trump by stumping last week with the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Haley and Trump haven’t campaigned together after a bruising primary battle. Haley said support for Trump was key for McCormick.
“Dave McCormack can't win if we don't elect Donald Trump at the top of the ticket,” Haley said. “You may find Trump noisy, but what I will tell you is he understands that we've got to get this economy turned around.”
The candidates squared off for two debates, where they often pivoted to attacking each other rather than laying out their own legislative visions. They rarely varied from set-lines they used in their advertisements and stump speeches.
Although Casey’s campaign spent more money on ads than did McCormick’s campaign, the Republican challenger was bolstered by outside money and overall outspent Casey by about $5 million in a race that saw more than $350 million spent on advertising alone.
Casey hasn’t had to win a Democratic primary in recent years and was able to shift to a more progressive stance on issues such as abortion without creating a major fight within his own party. McCormick lost a close primary against Oz in 2022 and has had to distance himself from some of his statements about abortion from that race.
Other Senate races that are likely to determine control of the Senate are in Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan. Republicans are all but assured to pick up the seat of outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, but Democrats have some hope they might be able to flip a seat in Texas or Nebraska, where independents are running strong races.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
