Don't expect a Senate winner in Pennsylvania on Election Night

The acting secretary of state sounds an early alarm on a slow count.

If Pennsylvania’s tightening U.S. Senate race turns out to be as close as its current trajectory, it’s unlikely the winner will be apparent on the night of Nov. 8.

Election officials have begun warning the public that tabulations in many counties will proceed well into the next day and possibly beyond, due to restrictions workers face in processing mail-in ballots.

“We will not have unofficial results in Pennsylvania on Election Night and that’s a fact,” Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, told McClatchy in an interview. “We’re expecting at least a few days for results to be final.”

And Oz’s campaign also expects the race to drag on without a swift victor.

“I don’t think we’ll know on Election Night,” said an Oz adviser.

Read my entire story at McClatchyDC HERE.

Some statistics for the numbers nerds:

• As of Thursday, 773,370 Pennsylvanians have cast early mail-in votes.

• 72.5% of early ballots have been cast by Democrats; just 19.5% have come from Republicans.

• 56% of the early vote thus far are from voters over the age of 65.

• Just 4% of early votes have come from 18-25 year-olds.

• A total of 1.3M mail-in ballots have been requested.

• 704,696 Pennsylvanians voted by mail and absentee in the May primary.

Tom Bonier @tbonier

At the same time, Dems are accounting for a larger and widening share of votes cast thus far, relative to '18 and '20. The Dem turnout advantage is 386,731 votes.

But remember … many Pennsylvania counties elect to tally in-person Election Day votes before the early ballots by mail … meaning …

“Initial vote tallies may lean Republican, but that may change as votes continue to be counted because Democrats are more likely to vote by mail,” said Rebecca Farmer, a spokeswoman for the Movement Advancement Project

And recall, in 2020, it took four days for news outlets to call Pennsylvania for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Trump, in fact, held an enormous lead for most of Election Night, until the early vote began to get tallied over night and into the next day.

Biden’s final margin in Pennsylvania was 81,660 votes or 1.2%.