LANCASTER, Pa. — The waiting game for who won Pennsylvania's Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate continued into Thursday — and likely will continue into June.
As of 10 a.m. Thursday, there are 17,000 Republican mail ballots that still need to be counted statewide, according to the state Department of State.
As of Thursday afternoon, 0.1% separated candidates David McCormick and Mehmet Oz. Oz led McCormick with 31.24% of the vote, or 416,704 votes. McCormick had 31.14% of the vote, or 415,335 votes.
Both McCormick and Oz's campaigns have been projecting confidence since election night that they'll see victory once every last vote is counted.
In total, there are still 51,000 mail ballots to be counted statewide, according to the Department of State. A handful of other counties have small numbers of mail ballots that still need to be counted, toward the 51,000 total outstanding ballots. The majority of those ballots come from the following counties and are not broken down by party:
* Philadelphia: 30,000
* Delaware: 4,800
* Lancaster: 3,800
* Greene: 1,777
* Tioga: 1,298
Campaigns also are waiting for Election Day votes to be reported from approximately 65 precincts, 31 of which are in Allegheny County, which hasn't updated its results since Wednesday around noon and plans to convene the county Returns Board at 9 a.m. Friday.
A senior official from the McCormick campaign said Thursday afternoon that they expect to gain at least 100 votes from the Allegheny County precincts.
The McCormick senior official added that there are more than 1,500 military and overseas ballots that still need to be reported. McCormick's campaign spent nearly $1 million in targeting this group, and his background as an Army paratrooper and combat veteran aligns with these voters, the official said, making the campaign confident he can win in the end.
The McCormick official said they believe two-thirds of those military ballots will be Republican voters, and that most of which will be in favor of McCormick over the "Turkish Army surgeon," the official added, taking a jab at Oz's Turkish military experience as a dual citizen.
Counties will continue accepting military and overseas ballots until Tuesday, May 23 at 5 p.m.
Oz's campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.
Even as the campaigns continue to wait for the remaining votes to be counted, they are simultaneously preparing for an automatic recount. An automatic recount would be scheduled if candidates are separated by 0.5% margin or less. The recount would be scheduled by Wednesday, June 1 and need to be completed by noon on June 7, according to the state election code.
