Democratic incumbent Bob Casey is refusing to concede his race for Pennsylvania Senate, which the Associated Press called in favor of Republican Dave McCormick on Thursday.
The AP race call came just hours after a Casey campaign spokeswoman said they were "confident" he would prevail—a claim that was quickly dismissed by election analysts.
McCormick was critical of former president Donald Trump in 2020 for not conceding his loss to President Joe Biden. "President Donald Trump should concede. Full stop," Casey tweeted. He also called on Trump to "do what every president who's been defeated has done in the past" by conceding.
McCormick, an Army veteran and businessman, led Casey by roughly 30,000 votes when the Associated Press called the race. His victory marks the fourth Senate seat to flip in the GOP’s favor, giving the party at least 53 seats in the upper chamber.
But Casey is not waving the white flag just yet, an act of defiance that is likely to draw allegations of election denialism.
"This race is within half a point and cannot be called with the votes of thousands of Pennsylvanians still being counted," said Casey campaign spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel after the AP called the race.
Both the campaign and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party have solicited donations to fund a recount, which would be automatically triggered if the vote margin falls below half of a percentage point.
The margin was just shy of that threshold when the Associated Press called the race at 4:09 p.m.
McCormick’s allies called on Casey to concede throughout the day Thursday, and election experts scoffed at the Casey campaign’s claims for a path to victory, even before the AP called the race.
"If you were in the Bob Casey camp you would not want to be in this position," Lakshya Jain, the founder of nonpartisan election analysis firm Split Ticket, said just hours before the race call. Jain pointed to uncounted votes in Cambria County, a Republican stronghold. "When Cambria comes in, Cambria is going to drop like a hydrogen bomb on whatever is left with Casey," Jain told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday morning.
Both parties viewed the race, which saw nearly $300 million in spending, as essential to winning control of the Senate.
While Republicans have already cemented firm control of the upper chamber with victories in Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio, the Pennsylvania seat is still a significant pickup–and not just for the moral victory in taking down a long-serving Democratic incumbent.
The McCormick victory will also provide Republicans more wiggle room to vote through Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, who could face opposition from moderate Senate Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
McCormick, who served in the George W. Bush administration, ran a barrage of ads that cast Casey as a "close friend" of President Joe Biden. Other ads portrayed Casey as a political weathervane who has shifted his position on abortion, gun rights, border security, and law enforcement.
Casey showed signs in the waning days of the campaign that he viewed the Biden-Harris administration as a political liability. He ran advertisements that featured Trump pushing for a stronger border.
"Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating," said a recent Casey campaign ad.
Casey’s campaign bled support from police groups and firefighter unions that have endorsed him in past elections. The Fraternal Order of Police of Pennsylvania and International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22, which represents firefighters in Philadelphia, endorsed McCormick after having backed Casey in previous races.