Pennsylvania Ping!
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Posted on 05/19/2022 8:50:15 PM PDT by lightman
With Pennsylvania’s county election administrators continuing to chew through mail-in and absentee ballots Thursday, the front-runners in the nearly deadlocked Republican U.S. Senate primary offered both argued that their paths to victory remained wide open.
That case seemed a little bit easier for Dr. Mehmet Oz’s team Thursday night, as the cardiac surgeon-turned-daytime television superstar still held a 1,123 vote lead over former Wall Street executive David McCormick.
As of presstime for this story, that broke down as follows: Oz, 417,719, or 31.2 percent; McCormick 416,596, or 31.1 percent. That’s with an estimated 98.6 percent of the vote in, according to The Associated Press.
But, to be sure, McCormick’s team was conceding nothing.
“We feel quite confident that when every vote that’s been cast is counted, that Dave McCormick is going to be the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Pennsylvania,” a senior McCormick official said.
The spinning aside, there likely won’t be clarity on this race until Tuesday, when the deadline passes for the receipt of ballots from deployed military service members and Pennsylvanians overseas, and county elections officials have made final determinations on what provisional ballots do and don’t make the final cut.
With the benefit of background calls from both campaigns where officials gave their assessment of where things stand, here’s a closer look at why Team McCormick hasn’t run up the white flag just yet, and why Team Oz says that eventually they will be. The Continued Mail-in Count
As of 6 p.m. Thursday, according to Department of State tallies, McCormick was winning 32.1 percent of the mail-in vote in the primary, with Oz second at 23.1 percent.
State spokesman Mark Walters said late Thursday that the department is estimating there are about 8,700 Republican mail-in and absentee ballots left to count. McCormick’s team believes there may be more. But taking State’s estimate at face value, if the candidates continued to get the same vote share from that group, McCormick could gain 785 votes on Oz.
Oz sources argued that is McCormick’s last best shot to win, and they said it looks to them as if there simply aren’t enough uncounted ballots out there to for McCormick - if he does continue to lead in this category - to catch up.
“We are confident Dr. Oz will win this race,” an Oz campaign staffer said.
But McCormick’s strategists said they have two other cards to play. Updated Election Day Results
There doesn’t appear to be room for a lot of movement here, but McCormick’s staff said they had identified 65 precincts in Philadelphia, Allegheny and Delaware counties where final vote totals stand to be revised starting Friday, largely because of mistakes made by polling place workers.
McCormick’s team says the Philadelphia shifts will be de minimus because there are barely any GOP voters in the affected districts.
Jim Allen, director of election operations in Delaware County, said the results in four affected precincts there amounted to a net gain of 16 votes for McCormick, and have already been added to its count.
Which brings us to Allegheny County, where miscues by precinct workers resulted in incomplete counts in 31 polling places.
McCormick has been running ahead of the field in his once and future home county, polling 38.8 percent of the Election Day count. Oz was second, at 33.4 percent. If the registered Republicans in the affected precincts turned out at a rate consistent with the county as a whole, and the candidates received the same vote share as they did on Election Day, McCormick could pick up a net 100 votes on. Oz.
“The math (for McCormick) just isn’t there from the areas that we were able to find,” an Oz official said. Overseas and Military Voters
These special categories of Pennsylvanians abroad can have their ballots received through next Tuesday.
Right now there are 1,582 - between both parties - that are awaiting processing statewide, according to McCormick’s team, and that number could grow. The vast majority of these are civilians: As an example, Allegheny County said that they have ballots in hand from 140 civilians and 11 service members so far.
There will likely be some more by next Tuesday.
This is a complete wildcard at this pojnt, but McCormick’s staff claimed that they had made a significant investment in outreach to these voters, so they hope they are mostly Republican, and that those Republicans will vote for McCormick at an even higher rate given his background as a West Point graduate who went on to serve in the Army’s revered 82nd Airborne.
“If you just give us a thousand of those (as Republican ballots), I think they’d probably pick the 82nd Airborne paratrooper over the Turkish Army surgeon,” the McCormick campaign official said. Provisional Ballots
After all the above buckets are emptied, there’s still the matter of provisional ballots.
These are the votes cast by first-time voters who are required to show ID but couldn’t produce one, voters who asked for a mail-in ballot but but didn’t fill it out and turned up to vote in person without officially surrendering their mail-in; or people who moved to a new address and didn’t updated your registration, but might still be eligible to vote for statewide races like governor and U.S. Senate.
County officials will start reviewing them Friday morning, and according to state guidelines are to render decisions on who’s vote is good, and who’s isn’t, by the close of business Tuesday, or seven days after the election.
For context, in the 2020 presidential election, about 1.5 percent of all votes cast in Pennsylvania started as provisional ballots. In most elections, that’s not seen as too big of a deal. But in this Senate race, that could be an additional 10,000 Republican votes.
It sure feels like they’re going to matter quite a bit this spring, doesn’t it?
The winner of the GOP race will advance into what is expected to be a hotly-contested and nationally-watched general election campaign against Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who easily won the Democratic Party nomination.
Kathy Barnette and Charlie Gerow were spoilers who might ultimately saddle PA with RINO Chinaman McCormick.
The REAL question is: Who can defeat pol-pot[head] Fetterman?
Honestly I believe OZ will be just as much of a RINO as McCormick, however McCormick is McConnell’s guy so I am rooting for OZ even though I honestly don’t believe he will be true MAGA!!!
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
BINGO!
Because he knows the fix is in for him to win?
Come on people. Everyone is angry about 2 of the 3. Sienna was labeled a communist. Hasn’t turned out so bad. Some things surprise us for the better. Mostly not though.
Essentially a related rates differential equation and I haven't done one of those in over four decades.
GA voters -- are you paying attention??
Hold your nose and turn out to vote for Perdue for governor in the primary. It's the only way you will get rid of the traitor Kemp.
One of the MANY problems with mail-in voting is that early voters might not be aware of pending endorsements made late in the campaign.
How many other-than-Oz early voters might have had regrets after DJT announced his endorsement?
OTOH, why did DJT wait until the 11th hour?
I reckon that's the best you can do. Oz isn't even remotely a conservative, but if he wins he'll owe Trump BIGLY.
Fetterman is one bad man. He is for everything bad for PA and America. He’s also repulsive looking.
Either way, whoever it is, it is one of these two guys versus an avowed Marxist. Whomever was your candidate, the options are now down to either Oz or McCormick, or Fetterman and that tedious little ethnic pancake of a woman he married, in your face delivering socialism to the masses in clever little tiktok videos. Get your mind right and figure out what keeps the Commonwealth from being that type of a joke.
“… McCormick’s staff said they had identified 65 precincts in Philadelphia, Allegheny and Delaware counties where final vote totals stand to be revised starting Friday, largely because of mistakes made by polling place workers.…”
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DemocRAT operatives to the rescue for the Globalist McCormick? He would owe them big time.☹️☹️
Makes no difference which one wins. They both will stab Trump in the back. Barnette was the only MAGA one running.
Romney owed Trump, but we see what happen there. Oz will do the same
Neither one are particularly good choices. You have a choice between a rino and a middle of the road beta male cuck.
CC
Trump endorsed OZ late in the game
So a majority of late mail ins will be for OZ
OZ wins
And Trump wins another endorsement.
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