Dave McCormick wins election to US Senate in Pennsylvania

republican Dave McCormickArmy veteran and former hedge fund CEO unseated three-term Democratic senator. Bob Casey He was in a nationally watched U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press.

Although Casey led in the polls for most of the campaign, the race has tightened in recent days. And McCormick ended up winning by less than 1 percentage point. Two days passed before the race was called as ballots were counted across the state.

A recount is still possible given the close difference. But McCormick has shown confidence since election night, when he told supporters the race was “heading in a very good direction.”

“That American dream is slipping away,” McCormick said at a results viewing party in Pittsburgh. “We need to give this back to every Pennsylvanian and every American, and we need new leadership.”

McCormick leads by just over 30,000 votes. The Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s Office announced Thursday evening that at least 100,000 ballots remain to be counted.

In a statement Thursday night, Casey made it clear that he will not concede while the vote-counting process continues.

“Pennsylvania is where our democratic process began,” he said. “We must allow this process to play out and ensure that every vote eligible to be counted is counted.”

Under Pennsylvania law, recounts occur automatically for races where the margin is 0.5% or less. McCormick currently leads by about that amount. But many counties, including Philadelphia, have not processed all of their provisional ballots.

McCormick’s campaign declared victory earlier Thursday before the AP announced its call.

“As long as the votes continue to be counted, no matter how you slice it, Dave McCormick will become the next U.S. senator from Pennsylvania,” McCormick spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory said.

If the AP’s call is confirmed, Casey’s fall will be seen as a shocking event in Pennsylvania politics. The mild-mannered moderate, who previously served as state treasurer and state auditor general, has won six statewide elections, often by significant margins, and is the son of a prominent governor.

This is all the more remarkable because the election results in Pennsylvania this year appear to be an anomaly. Five swing states held Senate elections this year. Donald Trump won all five. But voters from Michigan to Arizona appear to have split their tickets, as Democratic Senate candidates have won or are leading in four of those races.

Casey will likely be the only Democratic Senate candidate in a swing state to fail this year, allowing McCormick and Trump to close out the statewide poll in Pennsylvania.

McCormick first ran for office in 2022, losing by less than 1,000 votes to Mehmet Oz in the GOP primary for Senate that year in Pennsylvania.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, he worked tirelessly to connect Casey with the vice president. Kamala HarrisAn agenda that portrays the incumbent as a “weak career politician” who, despite his moderate reputation, will become a rubber stamp for the liberal Democratic establishment.

McCormick also shared his compelling personal story, which has become both a powerful argument for his candidacy and a target of attacks from Democrats.

McCormick was born in Western Pennsylvania and grew up in Bloomsburg, where his father was president of the city’s state university. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, was a member of the wrestling team, and served in the Gulf War. He received his Ph.D. After the war he received a master’s degree in international relations from Princeton University.

McCormick then spent about ten years in Pittsburgh, where he headed the software company FreeMarkets. In 2005, he joined the George W. Bush administration, holding prominent positions at the U.S. Departments of Commerce and the U.S. Treasury.

After leaving Washington in 2009, McCormick became the head of Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world and the target of many of Casey’s attacks. Bridgewater, for example, played a pioneering role in opening up opportunities for American investment firms in Chinese markets, leading Casey to argue that it was hypocritical for McCormick to talk about China on the campaign trail.

McCormick left the firm around the time he launched his political career in 2022, and questions about whether he was fully back in Pennsylvania followed him throughout his two Senate runs. It was reported earlier this year that he frequently flies back to Connecticut, where one of his daughters from a previous marriage lives.

McCormick is now married to Dina Powell McCormick, who was deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration and also served in the Bush administration.

Campaigns, their parties and outside groups spent more than $300 million on the race. The largest external sponsor was Keystone Renewal. pro-McCormick super PAC backed primarily by financial industry billionairessome of whom knew the Republican from his days in Bridgewater.

The PAC’s spending played a critical role in making McCormick financially competitive in just the second time he ran for office against a man who had won statewide elections, including races for Pennsylvania auditor general and treasurer.

Ultimately, McCormick’s message resonated with voters concerned about the economy and willing to support a pro-Trump candidate.

McCormick “has a lot of experience in business,” said Mary Dodge, 80, a retired teacher who lives in Ross Township in Pittsburgh’s North Hills and was a registered Democrat until a decade ago. Now, she said, McCormick and Trump represent the party “for the people.”

At a party for McCormick in Pittsburgh, supporters who had been knocking on doors for weeks took time to celebrate. Gloria Hutcherson, 73, a self-described born-again Christian who lives in Tennessee and spent two weeks in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, said McCormick shares Trump’s conservative values, such as excluding transgender athletes from women’s sports and closing the border.

“He’s a businessman, like Donald Trump,” she said.

In the 2022 Senate race, Trump snubbed McCormick in the primary by backing Oz, the celebrity doctor who lost to the U.S. senator. John Fetterman (D., Pennsylvania) in the general election. Trump endorsed McCormick this year and faced little competition in the primary.

That sets the stage for a race that will have as much on the line as it will in 2022, given the narrow partisan margins in the Senate, but with a significantly different tone than the matchup with the controversial and attention-grabbing personalities of Oz and Fetterman.

Casey is a run-of-the-mill Democratic senator who preaches the virtues of bipartisan civility, and McCormick is a clean-cut Army man turned businessman. And while neither shied away from attacking the other on the campaign trail, there was little drama in the race, leaving voters with a relatively simple choice between a career politician and a rookie plutocrat.

Neither candidate criticized their party’s presidential nominee, but both also sought to create some daylight between themselves and the top of the ticket.

Casey has repeatedly stressed that he does not support a ban on natural gas production, a position Harris took in 2019 but has since backed down. And McCormick said throughout the race that he believed Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which is generally seen as an insult by Trump.

Staff writers Jake Blumgart, Aubrey Whelan and Beatrice Forman contributed to this article.