After months as the underdog, Republican Dave McCormick appears to be on the cusp of an upset victory over three-term U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). With more than 95 percent of all precincts reporting, the Republican leads by less than one percent.
While no candidate has declared victory or conceded, it could be a stunning defeat for Casey. He hadn’t lost an election since 2002, when Ed Rendell beat him in the Democratic primary for governor.
Casey remains confident he’ll win, eventually.
“There are more votes that need to be counted in areas like Philadelphia and it’s important that every legal ballot will be counted. When that happens we are confident the Senator will be re-elected,” the Casey campaign said in a statement late Wednesday morning.
McCormick’s camp said Wednesday afternoon the election was theirs.
“The largest chunk of ballots remaining is Cambria County Election Day. We believe this batch will net Dave McCormick at least 20k votes. With Philly now all but completed the race is over,” wrote McCormick strategist Mark Davin Harris on X.
Unofficial returns show 95 percent of ballots from Philadelphia County have been counted. Centre, Cambria, and Montour counties are still processing ballots.
And while Casey carried all four Delaware Valley suburban counties, his margins were no match for McCormick across the rest of the state.
Leading by 13 points in some polls in August, Casey saw McCormick steadily chip away at his lead. By late September, the race was a margin of error contest and McCormick appeared to have the momentum.
Political operatives in the Keystone State long believed McCormick would give Casey a run for his money. But only a few predicted that McCormick would win. In the final RealClearPolitics poll average, Casey held a 1.8 percent lead.
While Casey struggled in polling – rarely breaking 50 percent – he remained ahead or tied in almost all voter surveys. McCormick never led in any poll save for a few outlying ones just before Election Day.
While Casey won the Delaware Valley, his vote totals lagged slightly behind those of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. He also performed weakly in Bucks County, winning by just 0.5 percent. A longtime swing county, Bucks is represented by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Congress, with Trump having won it by less than 0.15 percent.
Vote totals for both candidates ran below their presidential counterparts in unofficial vote totals. Republican Donald Trump received 3.43 million votes while Harris received 3.263 million. McCormick received 3.295 million votes with Casey receiving 3.228 million.
McCormick, the former CEO of Bridgewater, grew up in Bloomsburg where his father was president of Bloomsburg University. He later attended West Point and served in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
He earned a doctorate from Princeton in 1996 while working for McKinsey in Pittsburgh. McCormick joined the Bush administration in 2005 as Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. He then shifted to the Treasury Department in 2007.
McCormick was named Bridgewater president in 2009 and later became CEO in 2017.
He entered Pennsylvania politics in 2022 when he ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. He lost the primary to celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz by less than 1,000 votes. Oz went on to lose to Democrat John Fetterman in general election.
McCormick re-entered politics last September when he announced the challenge to Casey.
