PRIMARY AFTERMATH – OVERNIGHT:  The race for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania is still too close to call.  It may take a week or more to determine who won, and a recount is still a major possibility.   From AP:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick went into Wednesday essentially tied in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, expected to be among the nation’s most competitive races in the fall.

The contest was within a couple thousand votes overnight, out of more than 1.2 million cast. Trailing in a distant third place in the seven-person GOP primary field was conservative activist Kathy Barnette.

The Associated Press has not called the race. Some counties had yet to tabulate all of their mail-in ballots and the counting of provisional, overseas and military absentee ballots could last all week.

There is no runoff law in Pennsylvania. But the race was close enough to trigger Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, with the separation between Oz and McCormick inside the 0.5% margin that prompts an order by the state’s top election official.

Oz and McCormick emerged at their election night watch parties after midnight to say they would have to wait for vote-counting to resume Wednesday to determine a winner, with each saying he was confident of victory. There are no plans for either candidate to make a public appearance, though former President Donald Trump has encouraged Oz to preemptively declare victory. Oz has not made any suggestion that he will do so.

The state’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, won the Democratic nomination hours after undergoing surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator to help him recover from a stroke he suffered on Friday.

Democrats view the race to replace retiring two-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey as perhaps their best opportunity to pick up a seat in the closely divided 100-seat Senate.
Republican turnout exceeded 37%, the highest midterm primary turnout in at least two decades, juiced by more than $70 million in spending on the GOP primary alone.

COMMENT:  That turnout figure is important.  As we noted yesterday, turnout in primaries is a pretty good indicator of voter enthusiasm.  The Dems are counting on the upcoming Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade to drive turnout on their side, but it may be a false hope.  The protests against the Court are pretty much exhausted, voters know what's coming, and the left will probably go too far in their reaction and drive away more voters than they attract.

May 18, 2022