AP calls Senate race in Pa., McCormick declared winner while incumbent Casey doesn’t concede

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

Votes are in across the commonwealth and we now have a winner in the race for the U.S. Senate. Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is speaking out for the first time since the announcement. The race has been called by the Associated Press. Republican newcomer David McCormick will represent Pennsylvania in Congress, upsetting three-term incumbent Casey, who fought hard to keep his seat in his home state.

By early Thursday afternoon McCormick led by 0.4%. Casey’s camp then released a statement that the close margin could likely trigger an automatic recount, something they are doubling down on as they have not conceded to McCormick.

The Associated Press called the race two days after the election, declaring McCormick the victor.

McCormick was touted as being an outsider from Connecticut while Casey, whose father was once Pennsylvania’s governor, was known as Scranton’s pride and the hometown favorite.

Despite that, in the end, according to the AP, McCormick won the seat. His communications director Elizabeth Gregory re-shared the AP message on X, formerly known as Twitter, where she added this message, “so (expletive) proud of this team.”

Sen. Casey spoke out for the first time since the announcement tonight at 7:12 p.m. His campaign released this statement saying in part, “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.”

Casey went on to mention that there were more than 100,000 votes still to be counted and that he was not conceding the race.

“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,” Casey said.

Casey’s camp has been firing back at the AP decision throughout the day.

After the announcement Spokesperson Maddy McDaniel released a statement which read, in part, “As the Pennsylvania Secretary of State said this afternoon, there are tens of thousands of ballots across the Commonwealth still to count,” and went to say they are awaiting provisional, military, overseas and mail-in ballots before conceding defeat, in hopes to empower their supporters.

“This race is within half a point and cannot be called while the votes of thousands of Pennsylvanians are still being counted. We will make sure every Pennsylvanian’s voice is heard,” McDaniel said in the statement.

According to the AP, McCormick was leading by more than 30,000 votes when the AP called the race at 4:09 p.m. and said in a report, “though there were an estimated 91,000 votes still outstanding, there were not enough in areas supporting Casey there were not enough for him to make up the difference.”

Casey’s campaign, not ready to accept defeat, also shared these statistics to support their claims the race is not over, citing, “The Associated Press has called this race prematurely” and that there are 18,000 outstanding ballots in Allegheny County, and “the provisional counting process in Pennsylvania takes a while and these ballots may not be reviewed and counted for more than a week,” McDaniel reported in the release.

The Casey campaign also wrote, in part, “In 2022, 76% of provisional ballots broke for Senator [John] Fetterman.”

Fetterman, a fellow Democratic Senator who also represents Pennsylvania, criticized the AP for calling the race for McCormick too soon. Posting on X, “We still have tens of thousands of votes to be counted across the Commonwealth. @AP_Politics shouldn’t make a call in this race until every Pennsylvanian has their vote counted.”

WHYY reached out to the McCormick campaign for a response and has not heard back.