Bob Casey has a big lead in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. But Dave McCormick is still in it, a new poll shows.
Forty-nine percent of respondents said they planned to vote for Casey, while 40% supported McCormick.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) is leading his Republican challenger, David McCormick, by 9 percentage points among likely voters, according to a new poll by The Inquirer, The New York Times, and Siena College.
Casey, a three-term incumbent, has maintained a substantial advantage in polling throughout the high-profile race, which could decide control of the Senate. But the new poll also shows reason to believe the race could tighten significantly before Election Day.
Forty-nine percent of respondents said they planned to vote for Casey, while 40% supported McCormick. Despite having a strong lead, Casey remains short of a majority, leaving the door open to McCormick if the Republican can persuade a vast majority of undecided voters to back him.
Casey, whose father was a Pennsylvania governor, is already well-known to voters. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive making his second run for office, could have room to grow as more voters start paying attention to the race.
Lancaster County resident Connor Michael Lutter, 27, is the type of voter McCormick will need to win over if he’s going to make the race more competitive. Lutter, who is in the Air Force, plans to vote for former President Donald Trump this year, but said in the survey that he hasn’t made up his mind about the Senate race.
Lutter said he usually votes Republican and supports candidates who favor lower taxes and oppose U.S. involvement in foreign wars, especially in Ukraine.
“I’m definitely not going to want to vote on the left just because it just seems to be the party of war right now,” Lutter said.
The poll surveyed 1,082 likely Pennsylvania voters reached by phone between Sept. 11 and Sept. 16. The margin of error was 2.8 percentage points.
A previous iteration of the same poll, from April 28 to May 7, showed Casey leading 46% to 41%.
The new poll also surveyed voters on which of the Senate candidates they trusted more on various policy issues, and Casey performed well on issues that have been central to the race.
The incumbent had a 6-point lead when voters were asked who they trusted to handle the economy, a surprising finding given that Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris by 4 percentage points on that issue in the same survey. Casey’s favorability on the issue could be a sign that his efforts to cast inflation as a symptom of corporate profiteering — “greedflation,” as he calls it — are registering with voters.
Casey also had an 8-point lead on the opioid crisis, which has been a major issue in the race, and a whopping 19-point advantage on abortion, which comes as no surprise in a year when Democrats are seeking to highlight Trump’s efforts to restrict reproductive rights.
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The only issue that went McCormick’s way was immigration, with 42% saying they trusted the Republican more, compared with 41% for Casey.
Despite wall-to-wall advertising, the race has generated less buzz than the 2022 election for Pennsylvania’s other Senate seat, which featured much more high-profile personalities. That year, U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) defeated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who narrowly beat McCormick in the GOP primary after winning Trump’s endorsement.
Trump has endorsed McCormick this year.
Mark Woodhead, 45, is a disabled veteran and registered independent who lives in Lycoming County and plans to vote for Trump in the presidential race this year. Woodhead said he has seen ads about Casey and McCormick but needs more time to do his “due diligence” on the candidates.
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So far, he’s not excited about McCormick, in large part because he has seen political ads attacking McCormick for living in Connecticut for years before running for Senate. McCormick ended his Connecticut rental in June after winning the April primary.
“I’m not hearing good things. If the political advertisements are in any way, shape, or form truthful, then he doesn’t sound like a very good candidate,” said Woodhead, who responded to the poll. “Supposedly he lives in Connecticut. That’s literally all I know.”
Woodhead said he hasn’t heard much about Casey despite the incumbent serving in the Senate since 2007. For Woodhead, that’s “usually a good thing” because politicians who make lots of headlines often do so for the wrong reasons.
“He doesn’t make a lot of noise, so I haven’t heard pretty much anything,” he said, “and I do pay attention.”