What's Going On With Pennsylvania's Senate Race?

Source: Intelligencer

Republicans are poised to take control of both chambers of Congress after a decisive Election Day victory that will also send Donald Trump back to the White House for a second term. But as the final margins are still being tallied, the Senate race in Pennsylvania remains open with both candidates at odds over a projected victor in the close election.

On Thursday, the Associated Press called the race in favor of former hedge-fund CEO Dave McCormick, who, in his second attempt at the U.S. Senate, challenged Democratic incumbent Bob Casey. Other news outlets such as NBC News, CNN, and the New York Times have yet to officially call the race. However, Casey, the three-term senator, has held off on conceding, citing the slim margin between him and McCormick as well as the number of outstanding ballots that have yet to be counted. Per the AP, Casey currently trails McCormick by 39,545 votes.

“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,” Casey said following the AP’s call.

The Casey campaign has pointed to a statement from Al Schmidt, the state’s secretary of State, who said Thursday that there are an estimated 100,000 ballots remaining to be processed. In addition to Election Day votes, the outstanding votes include provisional, military, and overseas ballots. In a Monday press release, the campaign noted that provisional ballots “broke overwhelmingly” for John Fetterman in 2022 at a larger margin than Casey currently needs to overtake McCormick. Fetterman would later go on to win his Senate seat over his Republican challenger Mehmet Oz.

Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/whats-going-on-with-pennsylvanias-senate-race.html

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I personally think there is something wrong in Pennsylvania. Votes cast in Pennsylvania have gone up by 361,732 in 2016 and 799,881 in 2020. If that trend continues those votes should have gone up by more than 200,000, as they have in Pennsylvania for the last 28 years with the exception of 2012. However, there is only an increase of 40,508 votes cast compared to 2020. Pennsylvania had more voters register, with as many as over 100,000 registering in July alone, but it also has the lowest increase in votes cast since 2020 of any swing state. It seems that there are a significant number of votes missing.