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How McCormick beat Casey: A deep dive into the 2024 Pa. U.S. Senate race • Pennsylvania Capital-Star [1]
['Nick Field', 'Kim Lyons', 'John Cole', 'Ian Karbal', 'More From Author', 'June', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline']
Date: 2025-06-17 09:47:45+00:00
It was one of the most momentous upsets of the 2024 election.
The Senate battle between Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick was also one of the closest contests of the 2024 campaign cycle. The race was decided by just 0.22% or 15,115 votes. Whenever the results are so razor-thin, any and every development could well have been the one that ultimately determined the outcome.
Over the past few cycles, I’ve formulated a method to examine elections comprehensively, starting back to the earliest campaign developments all the way through to November’s precinct-level results. So let’s dive into 2024’s PA Senate contest and see what we can learn.
The Nominees
Bob Casey
Bob Casey went into the campaign with high name recognition in Pennsylvania politics. He had served 28 years in elected offices on the state and federal levels. His father and namesake was part of the state’s political world for 22 years, as governor, state senator and state auditor general. Yet, Casey didn’t seem to leave much of an impression on his fellow citizens.
In contrast to John Fetterman’s hoodie populism or Josh Shapiro’s ‘get s**t done’ motto, Casey hadn’t built up his own recognizable brand. In recent years, he frequently appeared with maps of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. The idea was that the long-time pol knew the commonwealth better than anyone, and had used that expertise to bring projects to every corner of the state.
While political science majors like myself appreciated Casey’s gambit, voters didn’t seem to grasp the desired point. As McCormick campaign adviser Brad Todd noted, “[Sen. Casey] was a mile wide and an inch deep. A lot of people were familiar with his name, but nobody was familiar with anything he had done or was working on doing.”
Without an easy-to-remember brand to fall back on, Casey was particularly vulnerable to Republican attacks. On top of that, Casey does not possess the kind of charisma that seems so vital in the current TikTok Era. The Democratic incumbent was widely regarded as a kind and effective public official, but couldn’t electrify an audience.
Dave McCormick
Dave McCormick entered the 2024 campaign cycle at a particularly low point. After all, he’d managed to lose a 2022 Senate primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz by a painfully small 950-vote margin (0.07%). So if Oz was a failure in losing to Fetterman after the 2022 midterms, McCormick was the guy who somehow couldn’t manage to defeat him.
Back then, the Oz forces were easily able to mock McCormick as a pretender who adopted the persona (and even the vest) of Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In early 2022, he was the often imitated patron saint of private equity Republicans. Furthermore, like Bob Casey, McCormick is far from a firebrand, notably having trouble generating enthusiasm from the MAGA crowd well into the 2024 campaign.
Oz had earned the endorsement of then-former President Donald Trump. Even after he was labeled by Bloomberg Businessweek as “the hedge fund CEO who went full MAGA” (complete with unflattering cover photo), Trump still felt McCormick was insufficiently loyal. Some mildly anti-Trump comments McCormick made after the Jan. 6 insurrection were brought to the former president’s attention and upset him. Trump made this displeasure known during a rally for Oz, calling McCormick a “liberal Wall Street Republican”.
Invisible Primary
For McCormick, the number one lesson he took from that 2022 campaign was to make up with Trump, and hug him as closely as possible throughout the 2024 cycle. First off, he needed Trump’s support to ensure he didn’t face a primary challenger this time around. The effort proved successful, and Trump officially endorsed McCormick in April of 2024.
On top of that, McCormick always had the crucial backing of then-GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell made it clear way back in the spring of 2023 that Pennsylvania would be one of the Republicans’ top four targets alongside contests in red states like Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. McCormick came from the hedge fund world and accordingly had a long list of wealthy supporters. By the end of the campaign, $110 million had been spent on negative advertising against Casey by outside groups, almost $34 million more than on attacks against McCormick.
The Republican used his early ads to try to erase the impression he left on voters in 2022, as well as to fill in the blanks on Casey. So out went McCormick’s Youngkin-style vest, and in came an emphasis on McCormick’s military service and high school wrestling background; portraying him as a tough, strong leader, while Casey was painted as too weak and subservient to Biden. “My opponent is a nice guy, he’s just not a leader,” McCormick asserted in his announcement speech.
Meanwhile, the Casey team stuck to a consistent three-pronged attack against McCormick: abortion, China and Connecticut. The Democrats frequently hit McCormick for an answer he gave during a 2022 primary debate, in which he said he only supported exceptions for the life of the mother, rejecting those for rape or incest. Casey also targeted McCormick’s investments in Chinese companies, tarring him as a man getting rich off outsourcing and foreign fentanyl.
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Finally, the incumbent continually poked fun at McCormick’s Connecticut mansion, aiming to repeat John Fetterman’s success mocking Dr. Oz’s New Jersey residence. This effort probably peaked early in spring 2024, with a particularly damning Philadelphia Inquirer story on McCormick jetting back to Connecticut after kick-starting a Pennsylvania bus tour.
But one of the top Casey campaign regrets may be the senator’s insistence on standing by the unpopular incumbent President Joe Biden. Since the two Scranton pols go back decades, Casey truly felt like he owed Biden his loyalty. After all, when Casey hit his low point in political life after losing a 2002 gubernatorial primary to Ed Rendell, the one Democrat to call him and offer encouragement was then-U.S.Sen. Joe Biden.
Even as Biden’s numbers fell and failed to bounce back, Casey still enthusiastically stuck by his friend. Conversely, Biden was ever eager to invoke ‘his friend Bobby Casey’ on numerous occasions, including during the 2024 State of the Union, when he called for Congress to pass one of Casey’s bills. The senator had made food companies slyly reducing their portions a pet campaign issue for himself; it was the kind of populist argument that could’ve broken through over the course of the year, but now it was tainted by association with what was becoming a toxic top of the ticket.
The dynamic only got worse after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June. Casey was one of the few Democratic officials up for re-election who stood by Biden, even campaigning with him in the weeks afterward. Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominees in the blue wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan, avoided being seen with Biden during this time.
As late as October, Biden was still making surrogate campaign appearances in the commonwealth. Long after it was clear he wasn’t getting any post-withdrawal bump, Biden held a fundraiser for Casey outside Philadelphia. That same day, meanwhile, Senator Baldwin steered clear of Biden during his trip to Milwaukee.
The Fall Campaign
Unlike the 2022 Senate match-up between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz, there weren’t many twists and turns in the final weeks of this race. The candidate debates were largely uneventful.
Throughout 2023 and into the summer of 2024, the Democratic incumbent kept a more or less consistent lead over his Republican challenger. In the aftermath of the switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, Casey got a noticeable bump as Harris rode a wave of popular momentum. Depending on the polling average used, Casey’s advantage was in the high single digits or and may have reached the double digit threshold.
But as the calendar flipped to September, Casey began to slip a bit as McCormick rose. As the fall progressed, Casey’s numbers would stay more or less static while McCormick’s continually grew. Yet on Election Day, Casey still led in all the polling averages by about two points. To illustrate the degree to which McCormick’s performance caught observers off-guard, two separate prediction models – those by the Split Ticket crew and DDHQ’s Zach Donnini – correctly predicted 33 of 34 U.S. Senate races, the sole exception for both was the Pennsylvania contest.
In those final weeks, the Casey campaign asserted in their television advertising that they were the more Trump-like candidate on tariffs, gaining some national media coverage. On the other hand, their efforts to spotlight a report on Dave McCormick’s intimidation of women who experienced sexual harassment failed to get the desired traction. Finally, the team’s closing message focused on Casey’s most popular accomplishments in office, like capping the cost of insulin.
McCormick shifted from tying Casey to Biden to tying Casey to Harris. The campaign was particularly proud that they produced one of the first videos connecting a Democratic senate candidate to various positions Harris took during her first presidential campaign in 2019. They closed by doubling down on Trump’s message of crime and the border, and a final spot focused on McCormick’s West Point history worked to seal the deal.
As for their respective campaign surrogates, Casey eschewed appearing with Harris and instead chose to stick by his Senate colleague John Fetterman as well as popular Gov. Josh Shapiro. McCormick, conversely, rarely missed an opportunity to associate with the top of his ticket, although he did have some other prominent surrogates. The most notable was an October town hall with Elon Musk in Allegheny County.
Election Results by Region
Southeast
While Casey tended to outperform Harris throughout the commonwealth, there were some pivotal outliers, particularly Philadelphia. It turns out that Harris outran Casey in places like north and west Philly, which are the areas with the highest Black populations in the city. So while Harris’ county-wide margin over Trump was 424,260, Casey’s own advantage over McCormick was only 412,469 votes.
Another area where Casey struggled was in the white-collar areas of the Philadelphia suburbs – Central Bucks, Eastern Chester, Northern Delaware and Southern Montgomery – where Democrats gained significant ground in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Among these four counties, Harris cobbled together a 243,386 vote margin, while Casey’s advantage stood at just 234,114. As a result, Casey trailed Harris’ pace by 21,063 votes in Philly and its suburbs, larger than McCormick’s 15,115 vote statewide margin of victory.
To put these stats into historical perspective, Casey’s margins were far behind his 2018 margins in the city (414,814) and suburbs, (289,614) despite far fewer people coming out to vote. Of course, 2018 was a Democratic wave in the midterm election cycle, yet Casey’s showing even trailed his pace from the last time he shared a presidential ticket.
Let’s look at the 2012 election, when Casey (159,111) managed to outperform Barack Obama (123,327) in the collar counties, while they were both on the ballot. Obama’s Philly advantage (a still-record 492,339) over Casey (480,425) was nearly identical to Harris’ over Casey last year. The difference is that the senator simply wasn’t able to keep pace in the suburbs, where McCormick made some crucial inroads.
Lehigh Valley
Here we find two of the three counties Bob Casey won in 2018 but lost in 2024: Berks and Northampton. Additionally, Northampton was the one and only county which John Fetterman won in 2022 that Dave McCormick carried two years later. Among the factors there, as well as in Lehigh County (where Casey also lost ground), was the Democratic Party’s continued deterioration with Hispanic voters.
Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and Reading are all home to appreciable Hispanic populations; particularly Puerto Ricans, who Democrats poured so much hope into during the final days of the campaign. The results, however, proved to be a devastating disappointment for the party.
To take just one example, consider Allentown’s 8th Ward, 6th District, where 78% of the voting age population is Hispanic. In 2012, Casey received 400 out of 467 votes, or 85.6%, from that precinct. Twelve years later, Casey got just 292 out of 465 votes cast, or 62.8%. At the same time, McCormick secured 152 votes (32.6%), while 2012 GOP nominee Tom Smith received just 58 votes (12.4%)
South Central
Cumberland has been one of the few blue-trending counties in the commonwealth over the past few years, with Democrats benefitting from the growing Harrisburg suburbs crossing over the Susquehanna River. After Tom Wolf and Josh Shapiro both won the county during their respective gubernatorial races in 2018 and 2022, the Casey team was surely hoping that they could be the first senate Democrat to win Cumberland since Joseph Guffey did it back in 1934.
Instead, Casey managed to perform worse than Fetterman in Cumberland, and the story was the same in neighboring Dauphin County too. This must’ve been particularly galling, as these white-collar voters were a far more natural constituency for Casey than they were for someone with a working-class image like Fetterman. Conversely, with some help from Trump at the top of the ballot, McCormick racked up his best (56,319) and third-best vote margins (43,525) in nearby York and Lancaster counties.
Southwest
Historically, Bob Casey was one of the strongest performing politicians among ancestral Democrats in the Appalachian region of the state. He dominated in this corner of the commonwealth against native son Republican Rick Santorum in 2006, hung on to win Beaver and Fayette counties in 2012, and even prevailed in Beaver again in 2018. The ongoing slide culminated in 2024 when Casey was shut-out of Allegheny’s surrounding counties, with McCormick easily carrying Beaver County by nearly 16 points.
It’s important to consider the possible electoral ramifications of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler County. Sen. Fetterman, for example, cited the outpouring of support he saw for Trump in western Pennsylvania as a contributing factor in his victory. McCormick was at Trump’s rally that day and frequently spoke to the media afterward about his experience.
But in the presidential race, Harris actually narrowly improved on Biden’s performance in Butler, as the county has gradually gotten bluer over the past few years.
While McCormick made several trips to this region with Trump, Casey brought his own biggest surrogate, former President Barack Obama, to Pittsburgh in October. Old friends going back to their Senate days (Casey supported Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries), Obama gave an extended endorsement of Casey as the senator sat by his side. Given Casey’s aforementioned struggles in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs, however, it’s worth considering whether the campaign made a mistake by holding this event in Pittsburgh instead of Philly.
Northwest
In November, Bob Casey managed to win three counties that every national and statewide Democratic nominee he shared a ticket with lost: Bucks, Erie and Monroe. His victory in the commonwealth’s only lakeside county particularly stings, as Erie has recently acted as a bellwether for the state. Yet whereas Fetterman won here by almost 9,900 votes two years ago, Casey’s advantage fell to only 2,265. It was the same case in Bucks and Monroe, as Casey’s small victories in traditionally pivotal counties couldn’t make up for disappointing results in other once-solidly Democratic areas.
Northeast
Now, consider Lackawanna County, where Scranton-born Bob Casey put up one of his best overperformances upon Kamala Harris, given that he won by 8.38% (or 9,709 votes) while Harris prevailed by only 2.78% (or 3,249 votes). But, Casey’s numbers weren’t nearly good enough. His 53.2% share was far less than the 61.1% he secured in this county back in 2018. It even pales in comparison to the 56.8% Fetterman got in 2022, when he carried Lackawanna by 13,955 votes over Oz.
Casey fell even further behind in neighboring Luzerne, a more populous county filled with tons of Trump’s white working-class voters. Once again, Casey ran ahead of Harris (a 22,553 vote deficit compared to a 29,940 vote deficit), yet fell way behind the pace set by Fetterman in 2022 (a 10,474 vote deficit). All the while, McCormick continued to ride Trump’s coattails just closely enough in nearly every corner of the commonwealth to prevail statewide.
Conclusion: Party Unity Made the Difference
In a close election where both Democratic and Republican nominees failed to reach 49%, third-party candidates made an impact. Libertarian Party nominee John Thomas finished with 89,653 votes (1.29%), Green Party nominee Leila Hazou received 66,388 (0.95%), and Constitution Party nominee Marty Selker got 23,621 (0.34%).
By the final days of the campaign, the Casey forces sought to raise the profile of Thomas and Selker, in the hopes that they’d pull away enough votes from McCormick for the incumbent to prevail. But, the 1.63% that Thomas and Selker combined took in wasn’t enough, as McCormick’s “Hug Trump” strategy paid off.
What stands out is the Green Party nominee’s total of 66,388 votes was far larger than McCormick’s winning margin of 15,115. Hazou also nearly doubled the votes given to presidential Green Party nominee Jill Stein (34,538), meaning that there were thousands of Pennsylvanians who cast a ballot for Kamala Harris, yet still spent their senate vote on a protest.
Remember, Casey was a slight consensus favorite going into election night. Meanwhile, throughout the 2024 campaign, there were many young, non-white voters upset over America’s role regarding the War in Gaza, and they were especially angry at President Biden and Senator Fetterman. This predicament created a real Catch-22 for Casey, who had to weigh the left-wing anger at Israel against the hundred of thousands of Jewish voters who live in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.
Casey decided to stick by Israel, although that didn’t stop his opponent from connecting him to progressive Democratic Rep. Summer Lee, who McCormick repeatedly called an anti-Semite over her criticism of Israeli policy. As a result, it’s entirely plausible that protest voters seeking to send a symbolic message unintentionally cost Casey his seat and elevated a much more hawkish candidate to the Senate.
Such a dynamic is emblematic of the entire 2024 election, as unity played a pivotal factor in these results. Dave McCormick and the rest of the Republican ticket collectively bet on Donald Trump’s cult of personality and an anti-incumbent mood among the electorate. Conversely, Bob Casey could not separate himself from an unpopular Democratic president and the chaos at the top of his own ticket. Such headwinds proved just powerful enough to take down a legend of Pennsylvania politics.
Now Casey must weigh a comeback bid in 2030, when he’ll be 70 years old. While that’s not so old for a senator, there’s already a deep bench of Democrats eager for their own opportunity. McCormick, on the other hand, will find his Senate race at the top of the ticket in 2030. With Trump barred constitutionally from running for a third-term, he’ll be left to sink or swim on his own merits,
Nick Field is a freelance reporter based in Philadelphia.
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