Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Senate race hangs in the balance nearly a week after Election Day, with Republicans declaring victory and Democrats hoping the remaining batch of outstanding ballots will allow them to close the gap.
NBC News has not yet declared a winner in the battle between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick, who are just over 40,000 votes apart with 98% of the expected votes in. An estimated 122,000 ballots remain to be counted.
McCormick declared victory Thursday after The Associated Press called the race in his favor. Since then, he and his Republican allies in Washington have increased pressure on Casey to concede, arguing he has no path to victory.
“The AP called this race several days ago because mathematically there is no path for Senator Casey to win,” McCormick said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
“Ultimately, Senator Casey will have to decide when he is ready to acknowledge that,” he added.
The Casey campaign has argued that the remaining number of expected provisional ballots, especially from places like Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs, could tip the balance in its favor.
Maddy McDaniel, a spokesperson for Casey, who is in his third term, said in a statement Saturday that counties are “confirming that there are more ballots that need to be counted” every day.
“Pennsylvanians deserve to have their voices heard, and as state officials have made clear, counties across Pennsylvania need more time to tabulate the remaining votes,” she said.
A McCormick victory would further strengthen Republicans’ new majority in the Senate, where they will hold at least 52 seats after the election. The size of the majority could play a major role in how much of President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda will be adopted and how many of his nominees will be confirmed.
But even before the new Congress is sworn in next January, the outcome of the Pennsylvania race could have implications for Wednesday’s Senate leadership election.
Three Republicans are vying to replace Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell as leader of the party, and elected senators can participate in the vote.
But without a clear winner in Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is waiting to invite McCormick or Casey to Congress this week for orientation and Wednesday’s vote — a move that Republicans made angry.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is running to lead the Republican Party, said on X that “the idea that Schumer would not allow him to participate in Senate orientation is beyond unacceptable.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called Schumer’s move to invite McCormick a “shameful, election-denying decision” in a post on X.
A spokesperson for Schumer defended the decision, pointing to the number of ballots that have yet to be counted in Pennsylvania.
“With more than 100,000 ballots still to be counted in Pennsylvania, the race is not yet decided,” spokesman Alex Nguyen said. “As usual, we will invite the winner once the votes have been counted.”
Similarly, Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego of Arizona was also not invited to the orientation because his race against Republican Kari Lake is too close to call, according to an NBC News projection. He leads by 2 percentage points with 91% of the expected votes.
Provisional ballots have been a controversial issue in Pennsylvania even before Election Day. Pennsylvanians can cast provisional ballots if officials are unsure of their eligibility or if there are problems with their returned ballots. In the days after an election, officials try to determine whether such voters are eligible to cast their ballots, and if so, their votes are counted.
In the days before Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania voters who mailed ballots flagged as potentially defective could submit separate provisional in-person ballots, dismissing a Republican lawsuit.
McCormick’s campaign filed two lawsuits Friday against an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 provisional ballots in Philadelphia that may contain problems such as missing signatures. Philadelphia is a deep blue area and the results in the county so far are heavily in Casey’s favor.
The court dismissed the issue for the time being.
On Sunday, the Casey campaign continued to express optimism about overcoming the vote deficit, pointing to the roughly 76% of provisional ballots that favored Democrat John Fetterman over Republican Mehmet Oz in 2022.
“We don’t believe we need to achieve Fetterman’s percentage split to win. In addition, there are thousands of ballots supporting Casey that are being cured,” said a person close to the Casey campaign, referring to the processing of addressing minor errors in mail-in ballots, such as signature issues.
At the presidential level, NBC News predicted that Trump would win Pennsylvania. He leads Vice President Kamala Harris by about 2 percentage points.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
