Bob Casey narrowly leads Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, where he also outruns Joe Biden

Democratic Sen. Bob Casey narrowly leads Republican challenger Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race with six months until the election, a new Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College poll shows.

Casey leads McCormick 46% to 41% among Pennsylvania registered voters, just inside the survey’s margin of error. An additional 13% of voters were undecided. The poll was conducted from April 28 to May 7.

Casey, who has represented the state in the Senate since 2007, had a similar lead on McCormick in an April poll from Emerson College.

The race, which the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says “leans Democratic,” is one of several that could determine which party controls the Senate.

While Casey and McCormick are running closely in the state, Casey is also outrunning his party’s presidential nominee, President Joe Biden.

Casey outruns President Joe Biden by 2 percentage points when voters are asked about a two-person race between Biden and former President Donald Trump. When third-party presidential candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are included in the mix, Casey outruns Biden by a much larger 10 points.

“I don’t really know a lot about Bob Casey, but I haven’t heard anything bad about Bob Casey,” said Charles Kestener, 41, a registered independent from Allentown who plans to vote for Casey but not Biden.

Kestener, a truck driver, criticized Biden’s handling of the economy and the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. He said he would support Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the presidential race over either major party candidate.

Casey leads McCormick with women and voters who identify as independents, as well as young voters and non-white voters, two groups that have drifted away from Biden in the state.

“People know the Casey family,” said Eric Stern, former deputy campaign manager for Sen. John Fetterman. “They know Sen. Casey extremely well and even if their feelings about national Democrats gets colder … They don’t necessarily hold the senator responsible for their feelings on the economy, or national issues, or inflation.”

Still, Stern said he expects the gap to shrink between Casey and Biden, two longtime political allies. “There just aren’t enough swing voters anymore. Even if Casey runs the best campaign in the world, he’s not gonna outpace Biden by 10 points.”

Trump outruns McCormick in a head-to-head presidential matchup and pulls in similar support when voters are asked about third-party candidates.

GOP political consultant Vince Galko, who worked on both of former Sen. Pat Toomey’s reelection campaigns, said if McCormick can outrun Trump in more suburban areas, where he currently trails Casey by a large margin, that could pay dividends.

“He can go after independents and swing voters in the suburbs that Trump’s not gonna get,” Galko said. “He’s got his military background and economic message, so it doesn’t even have to be big numbers, but a point and a half could be huge in the Philly suburbs.”

Biden and Trump remain unpopular candidates in the state with 55% of registered voters disapproving of Trump and 57% unhappy with Biden.

Casey is polling favorably with 49% of voters, compared to Biden who is favorable among 41% of voters. McCormick and Trump are even on favorability with 41% and 42% of voters considering them favorable candidates.

Mike Mikus, a Democratic political consultant who has worked on Senate campaigns in the state, said 49% favorability is a good sign for Casey.

“Those are really strong numbers in an environment like this for Democrats,” Mikus said. “It’s gonna take a lot of money and effort to try to make Bob Casey an unfavorable figure in Pennsylvania That’s one of McCormick’s biggest challenges.”

More Pennsylvanians view McCormick favorably (42%) than unfavorably (24%), but 34% either had not heard of him or had no opinion of him. That’s about 14 points higher than the 20% who did not know how they felt about Casey or said they had not heard of him.

It’s a sign that McCormick is still introducing himself to voters who may not remember him from the bruising 2022 GOP primary two years ago when even Trump was criticizing him.

And while Democrats have for months accused McCormick of being a carpetbagger who primarily lives in Connecticut, it’s not clear by McCormick’s favorability numbers that those attacks have resonated.

It’s early in the campaign cycle and both campaigns are eventually expected to pour millions into ads to get their names and messages out in the state.

Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is not up for reelection, but he’s frequently in the headlines for his boldly casual political style and staunch support for Israel.

The senator isn’t afraid to make waves, and voters seem split on how they feel about that. Fetterman’s overall favorability rating was at 48%, just 1 percentage point lower than Casey, his quieter U.S. Senate counterpart. An additional 41% of registered voters had unfavorable views of Fetterman.

Fetterman, a freshman senator, is slightly better known than Casey, with just 6% of voters saying they haven’t heard of him.

Stern, Fetterman’s former campaign manager, said that’s no surprise for the heavily covered Democrat:

“John Fetterman takes out the trash and there’s three news articles about it.”

Shivani Gonazalez of The New York Times contributed reporting.