McCormick led Casey 49% to 48.5% when the Associated Press called the race Thursday at 4:09 p.m. EST. The margin could set up a recount that Casey projected earlier Thursday.

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Although he did not make an acceptance speech on election night, McCormick addressed his supporters at his watch party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning with a message of hope for the future.

“In the coming days, the election results will be finalized,” McCormick said at about 1 a.m. Eastern. “And when they are, we will move forward to a new agenda, and we will look back on this day and say that was the day we turned the corner.”

Polling showed Casey with a comfortable lead over McCormick until last month when the Cook Political Report recategorized the race from leaning Democratic to a toss-up contest.

The tide for McCormick on election night began to change around 10:15 p.m. Eastern, with his numbers continuing to increase as the night went on. 

Supporters of McCormick told the Washington Examiner that they were optimistic about both McCormick and President-elect Donald Trump winning the Keystone state. Trump sealed his win already there in his sweep of the blue wall states.

“It’s all in God’s hands,” Michael Crow, 39, from the Edgewood neighborhood in Pittsburgh, exclaimed when the news first broke about McCormick’s inching lead.

Crow told the Washington Examiner that he believes McCormick and Trump work very well together and that McCormick “just did such a great job with campaigning.”

Contentious rhetoric during the campaign

Before Election Day, Casey had an average 2.6-point lead over McCormick, according to RealClearPolitics, repeatedly polling ahead of President Joe Biden, who, like Casey, was raised in Scranton, and then Vice President Kamala Harris, who struggled with white voters without college degrees.

But as Trump reasserted himself in the presidential race, so did McCormick in his Senate campaign. Casey released an ad last month that promoted how he had “bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating.” Simultaneously, McCormick had to contend with criticism that he was too much of an establishment Republican compared to Trump.

The Senate race was dominated by two competing narratives, with each candidate trying to relate to the anti-establishment, working-class voters that are pivotal to Pennsylvania.

McCormick, a U.S. Military Academy graduate who deployed to Iraq during the Gulf War before accepting positions in the private sector and then former President George W. Bush‘s administration, criticized Casey, a third-term incumbent, for only appearing to serve Pennsylvania in election years.

“Bob pops his head up every six years and tries to act like he’s doing things,” McCormick said during the pair’s first debate last month. “That’s what we have in this senator, a guy who keeps his head down, pops it up for political benefit, and gets nothing done.”

During his remarks at the Pittsburgh rally for Trump on Monday night, McCormick quipped that Casey, who became Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1997, was elected to his first position when the song “Macarena” was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

McCormick has also repeatedly criticized Casey for supporting Harris’s “greedflation” policies, including a federal ban on price gouging, which conservatives have scrutinized as price controls.

In return, Casey, whose father was the commonwealth’s governor for eight years, criticized McCormick’s residence, which was formerly Connecticut, and his business record at Bridgewater and other private companies, including investments in a Chinese corporation that produced fentanyl.

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Casey, too, criticized McCormick’s abortion policy despite describing himself as a “pro-life Democrat” before the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in 2022. His father was the Casey in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the other seminal Supreme Court abortion precedent that was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Different than 2022 Fetterman-Oz race

McCormick narrowly lost the Republican primary for Senate in 2022 against TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, who had significant problems connecting with working-class voters in the commonwealth.

Oz ultimately lost the previously GOP-held seat in the Keystone state to progressive lieutenant governor John Fetterman, former mayor of the western Pennsylvania city of Braddock. Fetterman connected with Pennsylvania’s industrial roots and defeated Oz by 5 points. 

“There’s no comparison,” Anna Mackin, 30, from the Bloomfield neighborhood of uptown Pittsburgh, told the Washington Examiner when asked to compare McCormick and Oz.

“We had a TV personality versus an actual human who has worked his way up the corporate ladder,” Mackin said, praising McCormick. “Absolutely, it’s a completely different race.”

Mackin’s neighborhood of Bloomfield is an area in the process of gentrifying, but it has deep immigrant and hardworking roots — the exact demographic that Oz had problems connecting with in 2022.

The Casey-McCormick race also did not break the record $347 million in campaign spending for the Fetterman-Oz race. Only $283 million was spent on the Pennsylvania Senate seat this year.