Staff Reports
As of Wednesday afternoon, the results of the Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania are still too close to call. Votes are still being counted. In the race to succeed retiring Senator Pat Toomey as the representative for Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional District, TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick are separated by fewer than 2,000 votes with more than 1.3 million ballots cast (R-Pa.).
Oz, who is backed by the now-former President Donald Trump, maintains a narrow lead over McCormick despite the fact that a number of counties have not yet completed counting mail-in ballots, provisional absentee ballots, overseas absentee ballots, or military absentee ballots.
Due to a statute passed in Pennsylvania, counties cannot start counting mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on the day of the election. This might cause the final tally to be delayed by several days. There are only a few states that offer voting by mail, and Pennsylvania is one of the few of those states that does not permit pre-canvassing of postal ballots.
Another law requires an automatic recount of the votes if the gap between Oz and McCormick is less than 0.5 percent, which might cause an even longer wait in the announcement of the results. The New York Times reports that Oz has received 31.3 percent of the vote out of a total of 413,784 ballots, while McCormick has received 31.1 percent of the vote out of a total of 411,833 votes. Kathy Barnette, an ardent supporter of Trump who made an unexpected rise in the polls during the last weeks of the campaign, came in a distant third place with 24.7% of the vote.
Trump urged Oz to claim victory on Truth Social, the social media platform he built to battle with the “liberal media consortium,” which consists of Facebook, Twitter, and other websites. A winner has not yet been announced. He made the allegation that the McCormick campaign had cheated by using votes sent in by mail, but he did not present any evidence to back up his claim.
“It’s time for Dr. Oz to declare victory. They will have a far more difficult time cheating with the ballots that they ‘just happened to locate,'” Trump claimed.
There are still thousands more votes to be counted before a winner is declared in this race. The campaigns of either Oz or McCormick have not admitted defeat, and each candidate has maintained optimism that they will emerge victorious after the remaining votes have been counted.
According to the Associated Press, voter participation in a midterm primary election was at its highest level in at least twenty years, with more than 37% of registered Republican voters casting ballots in the primary election.
After having a stroke on Friday, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman won the Democratic primary for the Senate with an overwhelming majority of the vote just a few hours after being admitted to the hospital to have a pacemaker implanted because he had suffered a stroke.
Democrat Josh Shapiro, who is currently serving as the state’s Attorney General, will compete against Republican Doug Mastriano for the governor’s office.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on The Blaze.
