Republican Dave McCormick declared winner of Pa. Senate race; Biden addresses the nation after Trump's win; Republicans win three more House seats in Pa.

Diann Berry, 58, a bank officer and Carlisle resident, said she is looking forward to Dave McCormick’s term as a senator. Berry, a Republican, said she typically — though not always — votes red up and down the ballot, but she’s never voted for three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

She said she supported McCormick because she is anti-abortion and doesn’t like Casey’s record.

“He didn’t do too much while he was in there,” she said of Casey. “ … I just feel like he wasn’t present.”

On Thursday evening in downtown Carlisle — a Central Pennsylvania town in U.S. Rep. Scott Perry’s district — Barry Morris said he didn’t vote this year because he was disappointed in the options for president, as well as for the House and Senate.

Morris, of Carlisle, who is retired and “over 65,” said he would have voted “none of the above” if he could.

“I think both parties have good things, and I can't figure out why they can't get together and get her done,” he said. “Easier said than done.”

Some residents of Carlisle, Pa., the county seat of Central Pennsylvania’s Cumberland County, were not familiar with the candidates they voted for in the fierce competition between U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, an ally of former President Donald Trump, and former newscaster Janelle Stelson — which Perry ultimately won.

Darci Engelman, 34, a dry cleaner who lives in Carlisle, said that “mayors and all that should not be in the office” when asked about the Congressional race.

Engelman spoke highly of Trump and said that while she voted Republican down the ballot, she doesn’t care about the other races.

While the AP has determined that Republican Dave McCormick won the Pennsylvania race for U.S. Senate, Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, has not conceded the race.

Casey emphasized that not all of the ballots have been counted, and said that the process needs to play out to "ensure that every vote that is eligible to be counted will be counted."

“I have dedicated my life to making sure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard, whether on the floor of the Senate or in a free and fair election,” Casey said in a statement. “ ... Pennsylvania is where our democratic process was born."

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped campaign manager Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, the first female chief of staff to a president in U.S. history, his transition team announced Thursday.

“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said in a statement. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again.”

Wiles has been credited for running Trump’s most sophisticated campaign to date and for gaining the former president’s respect.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said Thursday it is estimating that at least 100,000 ballots have not yet been tabulated across the commonwealth.

The announcement, made in post on X attributed to Secretary of State Al Schmidt, came after the Associated Press called the U.S. Senate race for Republican Dave McCormick. McCormick leads in the race by just over 30,000 votes – less than half a percent of ballots counted and within the margin for an automatic recount if his lead remains this narrow next week.

The 100,000 ballots, Schmidt said, include provisional ballots, military and overseas ballots and Election Day votes. Not all of these ballots will ultimately be counted as some may ultimately be deemed invalid.

Republican Dave McCormick, an Army veteran and former hedge fund CEO, has unseated three-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania’s nationally watched U.S. Senate race, according to The Associated Press.

While Casey held a lead in polls for much of the campaign, the race tightened in the final days. And McCormick ended up squeaking out a victory of less than 1 percentage point. It took two days days before the race to be called as ballots were counted across the state.

A recount is still possible given the close margin in the race, and Casey has not yet conceded the race.

Sean Dougherty bested Republican challenger Aizaz Gill for the 172nd District’s state House seat, keeping Northeast Philadelphia blue.

The win leaves Democrats and Republicans tied 101-101 for control of the Pennsylvania State House with just one race left to be called — the 72nd District race between incumbent Democrat Frank Burns and Republican Amy Bradley.

Dougherty’s win comes following his successful unseating of State Rep. Kevin Boyle, a seven-term incumbent, in April’s primary election. Boyle sought reelection with the party’s support as his family said he was struggling with a serious mental health condition. 

Democrats slim hopes of flipping the U.S. House were hurt Thursday afternoon after the Associated Press called three Pennsylvania races for Republicans.

Republicans Ryan Mackenzie and Robert Bresnahan flipped Democrat-held seats, while Rep. Scott Perry won reelection in a tight race against former local TV news personality Janelle Stelson.

But Democrats also held onto three seats — in North Carolina, Washington, and Nevada — keeping alive the possibility of a divided government once Donald Trump takes office.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who was a key surrogate in the city for Vice President Kamala Harris in the home stretch of the presidential campaign, said Thursday that the election is in “the rearview mirror” and that she is preparing to work with the future Trump administration.

Asked if she could have done more to elect Harris, Parker, a Democrat, said she refused to Monday morning quarterback and said she “didn’t promise the people of Philadelphia perfection.”

“I wish everything that I tried to accomplish in my life had come true,” Parker said during a news conference outside City Hall Thursday afternoon. “Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose… If you’re a lifelong Philadelphian, you know we never give up.”

Rob Bresnahan Jr. has flipped Northeast Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, ousting U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright.

Bresnahan, 34, defeated the incumbent Democrat in a district that includes Wayne, Pike, and Lackawanna counties, as well as part of Luzerne County. Cartwright, 63, has held his seat since 2013 in an increasingly competitive district that voted for former President Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020.

Bresnahan is the CEO of his family’s electrical contracting company and founded RPB Ventures to rehabilitate Downtown Pittston buildings.

Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry won reelection for a seventh term representing the 10th Congressional District, defeating Janelle Stelson, a Democrat and former local news anchor who tried to flip the central Pennsylvania district.

Perry faced a brutal challenge from Stelson, who left her career in local television news to challenge the conservative lawmaker in the U.S. House district, which includes Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York counties.

Perry, 62, warded off past attempts to flip his seat, but this year’s race became increasingly competitive, first when Stelson, 64, entered the crowded primary and then as she maintained strong fundraising, outraising Perry.

Republican State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie won Democrat Susan Wild’s seat in the Lehigh Valley’s 7th Congressional District, a victory with significant implications for the balance of the House of Representatives.

Mackenzie, a right-wing Republican who represents parts of Lehigh County in Harrisburg and who asked Congress not to certify the 2020 presidential election results, emphasized discontent with inflation and problems at the U.S.-Mexico border during his campaign.

The race, which had been considered a toss-up, was called “absolutely one of the most important in the country,” said Stephen Medvic, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College.

Delaware County officials raised the possibility Thursday that a right-wing activist who’d challenged the eligibility of more than 140 mail voters as part of an organized, statewide campaign could face criminal consequences for her role in the effort.

Members of the county’s Board of Elections warned Patricia Bleasdale, the woman behind the challenges filed there, that they would consider referring her to District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer for potential prosecution should they determine she’d brought them without evidence to disenfranchise voters.

But Bleasdale, a 73-year-old registered Republican from Glen Mills, persisted with her complaints at the start of the board’s meeting Thursday.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick on Thursday appeared to declare victory in his race against Democratic incumbent Bob Casey Jr. despite The Associated Press not having called the race and the possibility that the narrow margin triggers Pennsylvania’s automatic recount process.

McCormick is currently up by about 31,000 votes, or 0.4%. Pennsylvania law provides for automatic recounts for elections in which the margin is 0.5% or less.

But McCormick spokesperson Elizabeth Gregory noted that “ruby red” Cambria County, where McCormick is carrying more than 60% of the vote, is only halfway through counting its ballots by hand due to problems with its voting machines on Election Day.

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of President-elect Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session later this year to safeguard the state’s progressive policies on climate change, reproductive rights and immigration ahead of another Trump presidency.

Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California's state laws.

The move — a day after the former president resoundingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race — effectively reignited California’s resistance campaign against conservative policies that state Democratic leaders started during the first Trump administration.

By a margin of 56 to 44 percent, voters in Atlantic City, which already has nine open cannabis shops, approved a non-binding referendum to expand the "green zone" out from Pacific and Atlantic Avenue and the beach blocks and outward onto Kentucky and Albany Avenues.

With dozens more applications in the pipeline to open legal dispensaries in the casino town, advocates argued that spreading them out would reduce over-saturation, even if it resulted for more overall. Christopher Aponte, 42, and Miguel Lugo, 38, partners in AC Leef, who own a former restaurant/nightclub on Albany Avenue they want to turn into a dispensary, were out on Election Day campaigning for the referendum.

"It's fairness for small business," said Aponte. "How many bars are there in a small radius? Look at the dollar stores, they're everywhere. Business is business. It's a retail store that should be treated fairly."

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro congratulated the winners in Tuesday’s election and will “show respect” for voters’ choices, following President Donald Trump’s win in Tuesday’s election — and a red wave that came with it.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s unusually popular first-term governor who Vice President Kamala Harris passed over to be her running mate, had been a top surrogate for Harris during her 107 days campaigning for president and appeared in advertisements in the final days of Harris’ campaign.

But in his statement Thursday, he urged unity and pledged to “find ways to bring people back together” and “deliver results” for all Pennsylvanians.

In her first public comments since the election, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker did not address the seismic vote that just took place or her feelings about it. She's expected to address the election results at a 1 p.m. news conference at City Hall.

Speaking at the nonpartisan Pennsylvania Conference for Women, which drew roughly 9,000 women to Center City Thursday morning, she thanked the other speakers and urged attendees to spend money in the city.

She also referred somewhat obliquely to being a “first,” offering subtext for those who might want to read between the lines. Parker is the first woman to lead Philadelphia.

President Joe Biden said his administration would work with President-elect Donald Trump to ensure “a peaceful and orderly transition” of power following the 2024 election.

“That's what the American people deserve,” Biden said in an address from the White House Thursday.

Biden celebrated election workers and the transparency of the election results, hoping it would “lay to rest questions about the integrity of the American electoral system”

The economy loomed large in this election and Democrats never figured out an effective rebuttal.

“Even though the economy is bouncing back, the regular products that the normal, everyday person cared about are up, and they’re not going down,” said City Councilmember Jim Harrity, who works with both the state and city parties. “The message of her going after the price gougers and stuff like that, I don’t think it really resonated. People thought ‘Well, they were there, why didn’t they do it already?’”

That messaging fell especially flat in working-class communities, John Cordisco, a former chairman of the Bucks County Democrats said. He noted that Trump carried or improved his margins in working-class towns in Lower Bucks County such as Tullytown and Falls Township.

Long-simmering tensions between the city’s Democratic Party chair and Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign erupted in public after her loss on Wednesday.

As Democrats across the state were processing Harris’ defeat by former President Donald Trump, former U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, the party chair since 1988, unleashed a torrent of blame on the Harris campaign.

He questioned whether Harris should have replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket, speculated Gov. Josh Shapiro would have been a better pick for a running mate, and claimed the campaign didn’t respect ward leaders or give him a meeting with the vice president.

Donald Trump‘s impending return to the White House means he’ll want to stand up an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team is also pledging that the second won’t look much like the first one Trump established after his 2016 victory.

The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives on Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs by Trump’s team.

That includes everyone from the secretary of state and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected to serve part time on boards and commissions. Around 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with the Senate now shifting to Republican control.

Dressed in all black, Vice President Kamala Harris greeted a crowd at her alma mater of Howard University at 4:25 p.m. Wednesday as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and her family sat in the crowd.

She walked out to Beyoncé's "Freedom."

"Let me say, I love you back. My heart is full today. Full of gratitude for the trust you've placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve," she said.

When Ala Stanford’s children woke up at 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, she had to break the news: Vice President Kamala Harris had lost the presidential election. And that meant former President Donald Trump won.

“One rolled over [and said], ‘I knew this was going to happen,’” said Stanford, a medical doctor who founded her own health equity center and is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. “The other one was like, I wish I was dead.”

Immediately, Stanford realized she didn’t have time to process her own emotions about the election.

When New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli went on Fox News in late October and predicted New Jersey could go for Trump, Democrats in the blue state laughed him off. Most were so sure their state was true blue, they were spending their time volunteering in Pennsylvania.

But on Wednesday, after the state delivered New Jersey’s 14 electoral votes to Kamala Harris, but just barely, it was the state’s Trump supporters who were having the laugh. And making more bold predictions.

“I think New Jersey will be a swing state in 2028,” Matthew Diullio-Jusino, a Trump supporter who attended multiple New Jersey events leading up to election, said Wednesday. He blamed the state’s GOP leaders for not trying harder to win the state. “If they were supportive of President Trump we would have pushed him over the top. They just kind of wrote it off.”

HAZLETON — Sitting on a stoop with friends along this city’s North Wyoming Street corridor Wednesday morning, Carlos Pagan, 73, said he voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, but described his mood as being contento, the Spanish word for glad.

Pagan, a registered Democrat who is Puerto Rican and Dominican, lamented his support for Harris.

“That was a mistake of mine,” he said. “The country would have gone backward.”