Sen. Bob Casey is not giving up on retaining his U.S. Senate seat. The three-term Democrat is currently locked in a tight race with Dave McCormick, trailing the Republican by just over 29,000 votes as of 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 13. CBS News has not issued a projection in the race.
Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt announced Wednesday afternoon that unofficial results in the race have triggered a statewide recount.
That’s because vote totals for McCormick and Casey are within a 0.5% margin, which triggers a statewide recount under state law.
According to the Department of State, as of 4 p.m. on Nov. 14, Casey received 48.53% of the vote with 3,359,086 votes and McCormick had 48.90% with 3,385,115.
Counties must begin the recount by Nov. 20, the announcement says. Counties must finish the recount by noon on Nov. 26 and report the results to the secretary of the commonwealth by Nov. 27 at 12 p.m.
In a livestreamed press conference, Schmidt shared more details about the recount. Counties will begin the recount as soon as they finish counting all of the votes the first time, he said. As of Nov. 13, there were about 80,000 ballots left to be counted. That includes about 20,000 mail-in and absentee ballots and about 60,000 provisional ballots.
