Pennsylvania gears up for another blockbuster Senate race

STATE STATS

Voter makeup: As of December 2022, there were roughly 8.7 million registered voters in Pennsylvania, down from just over 9 million in 2020. The share of Democratic voters has grown over the past several cycles, but the margins are still close enough to consider Pennsylvania a significant swing state. Democrats number nearly 4 million and Republicans almost 3.5 million.

Voting: Pennsylvania allows no-excuse mail-in voting since Act 77 altered the state’s election code in 2019. Mail-in voting surged during the pandemic in 2020. Identification is required at the polls for first-time voters at a new polling location, but it does not need to be photographic. Commonwealth residents have until October 21 to vote in November’s election. Pennsylvania does not allow same-day voter registration.

PRESIDENTIAL

In 2020, President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes with 50.01 percent of the state. With the exception of 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a vote of 48.58 percent to 47.85 percent, the Democrats have won every presidential election in the state since 1992.

In this week’s Democratic presidential primary, President Joe Biden received just over 930,000 votes, or 93 percent. Nearly 7 percent of the party voted for former Democratic candidate Dean Phillips, a U.S. congressman from Minnesota. Phillips ran on the platform that Biden is too old to serve a second term.

As with other states, activists who oppose Biden’s support for Israel sponsored a write-in campaign in protest. Groups such as Uncommitted PA told Democratic voters to pencil in “uncommitted” instead. Preliminary results show 60,178 Pennsylvanians took this option, though it is unclear how many of these write-ins are “uncommitted” and how many are for another candidate.

Former President Donald Trump gained 83 percent of his party’s votes in Pennsylvania, or 789,350 votes. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race in March, received 16.6 percent of the vote.

SENATE

Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. faced no challengers in the Democratic primary. He hopes to retain his seat for a fourth term this year. The son of former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey Sr. got his political start as state auditor general in 1997. After losing the primary for governor in 2002, Casey successfully ran for state treasurer in 2004. Then in 2006, he unseated Republican incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum. Casey was one of the first senators to publicly endorse then-candidate Barack Obama during the presidential primaries in 2007, which gave him a fast track for White House influence over the next eight years. Casey changed his views on gun control after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and has since supported more checks and regulations on gun sales. He sponsored the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which became federal law in 2009 and prevents people convicted of hate crimes from purchasing guns. Up until 2016, Casey was considered a left-leaning moderate, but in recent years he has aligned more closely with the Democratic base. In 2022, he abandoned his pro-life position and promised to vote to codify abortion access if given the opportunity. He was also an early supporter of legalizing same-sex marriage.

On the Republican side, former hedge fund CEO David McCormick seeks a second chance to go to Washington. He ran for Pennsylvania’s other U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and lost in the Republican primary to celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz, who received Trump’s endorsement. Democrat John Fetterman defeated Oz in the general election by nearly 5 points. While Trump criticized McCormick for being part of the establishment, Republicans complained that running a weaker candidate cost them the election. This year, Trump and most of the GOP establishment have backed McCormick in hopes of winning back a Senate seat. The race is expected to be one of the most expensive statewide elections in the country this cycle.

U.S. HOUSE

• Pennsylvania has 18 congressional districts equally balanced between Republican and Democratic representatives. According to the Cook Political Report, Pennsylvania’s 7th and 8th Districts are tossups this year. Both have Democratic incumbents and encompass “pivot counties” that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

• In the 8th District, Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright is running for a fourth term. His website claims he has introduced more bipartisan bills than any of his Democratic peers. According to tracking by FiveThirtyEight, he has voted with Biden’s priorities 100 percent of the time. His opponent, Republican Rob Bresnahan Jr., 34, has worked as an executive at his family’s electrical company. He has said he would support closed border policies and other conservative priorities like protecting girls from competing against boys in school sports.

• In the 7th District, Democratic Rep. Susan Wild is also hoping for a fourth term. She is running on a platform to lower prescription drug prices and support climate change response policies. Wild is the ranking member on the House Ethics Committee. Her challenger in November will be Ryan Mackenzie, a six-term Republican state representative. He said that if elected he would cut spending in Washington and work to secure the southern border.

• In the 12th District, Democratic Rep. Summer Lee successfully defended her seat against a primary opponent in a race that has become a proxy battle over the Middle East. Lee is a member of “the Squad” in Congress, a group of progressive members. She has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war and alleged that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. But the district in the Pittsburgh area is also home to Squirrel Hill, a prominent and historically Jewish community where a white supremacist killed 11 people in the Tree of Life synagogue massacre.

Dig deeper:

• Read my report on how Republicans in Pennsylvania have begun to embrace mail-in voting ahead of November.
• Read Josh Schumacher’s report in The Sift about a recent Pennsylvania federal appeals court decision that blocks undated ballots from being counted.
• Listen to Lillian Hamman’s report on The World and Everything in It about a pro-life law some Pennsylvania lawmakers want to rescind.
• Read Emma Friere’s story in WORLD Magazine about Mark Houck, a Catholic father who was arrested for a pro-life protest in front of an abortion center. Houck ran for Pennsylvania’s first congressional seat but lost this month’s primary to incumbent Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.

Visit the WORLD Election Center 2024 to follow our state-by-state coverage between now and November.