Primary election 2022 live updates: Pa. GOP Senate race in dead heat

The Pennsylvania State Department said it's “unlikely that final results in all races will be available tonight."

"We know voters want results on Primary Election Night, but the priority must be to make sure every vote is accurately and securely counted," the agency said in a statement. "Ahead of the primary, more than 900,000 applications for mail-in and absentee ballots were requested. Pennsylvania election law does not permit pre-canvassing of ballots before Election Day — counties cannot begin counting mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

"We expect to have unofficial results within a few days," the statement continued. "Given the possibility of recounts and the need for official certifications, it is unlikely that final results in all races will be available tonight."

Some races have razor-thin margins, including the GOP Senate primary featuring Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick and the Democratic House primary in the 12th Congressional District between state Rep. Summer Lee and Steve Irwin.

The results in Pennsylvania’s primaries haven’t been certified, but the election has been certifiably wild.

The Democratic lieutenant governor and attorney general, respectively running for the Senate and governor, both missed their election night parties. The former, John Fetterman, had a pacemaker installed Tuesday morning, and the latter, Josh Shapiro, announced he had Covid about the same time.

On the Republican side, a far-right election conspiracy theorist who organized bus rides to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021 cruised to a win in the primary in the governor's race. 

Meanwhile, the only Black GOP candidate in the Senate race played defense over photos showing her marching with the far-right Proud Boys at the riot. Despite a late surge in the polls, Kathy Barnette lagged behind in the count early Wednesday, when Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor who was buoyed by an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, edged ahead. Trump's original Senate pick quit the race amid allegations of domestic abuse.

On the left and the right, veteran operatives watched the closing days of the primaries and found it hard to recall anything quite like it before there — or even in what used to be the king of wild statewide elections, Florida.

“It’s the most insane primary I have ever seen. I mean, honestly, I just wish I was part of it. I’ve done crazy elections in Pennsylvania and in Florida, but this is on another level,” said Republican consultant Chris Mottola, a Pennsylvania native who has seen his share of wild elections.

“The only thing that this primary lacked was somebody being fed to the lions. But it’s early,” he said. “This could go further, because the odds are good that there could be a recount. And that’s when they bring the lions.”

Chris Nicholas, a top Republican consultant in Pennsylvania, wondered where the election ended and where the satire begins. “It seems we’re living in a Monty Python skit here,” Nicholas said.

There’s bipartisan agreement on that point.

“It’s been nuts. I wish there was a more scientific word. But it’s just insane,” said Mustafa Rashed, a top Democratic consultant from Philadelphia.

"Every day news of the moment shocks out and washes out the news of the moment from just a few moments ago,” Rashed said, noting that he and another Democrat were comparing the weirdness of Pennsylvania to a ridiculous moment in Florida’s 2014 governor’s race, when then-Gov. Rick Scott initially refused to take the stage to debate Democratic former Gov. Charlie Crist because Crist had a personal fan on stage to keep him cool, which broke the debate rules.

“Pennsylvania is trying to get to Florida crazy,” he said. “It’s a low bar. But we’re trying to get there.”

At Fetterman’s rally, his wife, Gisele Fetterman, also found time to make light of the situation. “I would like to take a moment to address the elephant in the room, which is that my husband, John Fetterman, is not in the room tonight,” she said.

The crowd burst into laughter.

Mehmet Oz, locked in a tight race with Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania's Republican Senate primary, thanked Fox News host Sean Hannity at his election night party, during which he also suggested that voters might not know the winner for some time.

"I want to thank Sean Hannity," said Oz, who is backed by Hannity and former President Donald Trump. "He’s like a brother to me.”

He added that Hannity was of much help "behind the scenes."

Typically, members of the media do not coordinate on strategy with candidates, but Hannity is known for his close relationship with Trump.

Oz also offered Trump effusive thanks and told supporters to "get some rest, we got a lot to do."

“When all the votes are tallied, I am confident we will win," he said.

Many Republican voters in Rep. Madison Cawthorn's district felt Cawthorn was an embarrassment — and, perhaps more important, that he sought national attention at the expense of doing his job at home — a sentiment repeated in interviews NBC News conducted in the district this month.

Cawthorn got off on the wrong track with many voters this cycle by initially choosing to run in a neighboring district before he decided to seek re-election in the 11th District, instead.

Read the full story here.

While election results from in-person voting are rolling in across Pennsylvania, some mail ballots in the state aren’t likely to be counted for days. (NBC News hasn't projected a number of races, including the GOP Senate primary.)

Pennsylvania law prohibits election officials from beginning to process mail ballots until Election Day, a rule that some election workers say sets them up for delays.

Early processing of mail ballots often includes verifying the signatures on the outsides of ballots to ensure the ballots were cast by registered voters. Thirty-eight states allow some kind of processing — often called pre-canvassing — before Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Pennsylvania is one of nine states that allows such processing to begin only on Election Day.

And Pennsylvania voters cast a significant number of mail and early absentee ballots this year: According to the Pennsylvania State Department, election officials had around 900,000 mail or early ballots as of Monday night.

Some Pennsylvania counties don’t plan to start counting ballots until Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Lancaster County officials said they will need several days to count all their mail ballots because of a printing error that is forcing election workers to re-mark thousands of ballots.

Former President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Pennsylvania’s slow counting was a sign of fraud in the 2020 election. Legislation to give election officials the ability to process ballots before Election Day failed last year, when Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed it over other election provisions, including a new voter ID requirement.

NBC News is projecting that Pennsylvania state Rep. Carrie Del Rosso, a Republican who flipped a Democratic-controlled district outside Pittsburgh in 2020, will win the nomination for lieutenant governor. But her place on the November ticket puts her in contrast with Pennsylvania’s GOP nominee for governor.

Del Rosso, who has condemned violence and lawbreaking at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, told NBC News in February she thought anger over Trump’s loss was dissipating.

Meanwhile, far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano, NBC News' projected GOP nominee for governor, spent months championing the election denial movement and was at the Capitol on Jan 6. He says he left before the riot.

“I think that there are some people that are still mad that Trump lost,” Del Rosso said in February. "But I think that people are moving away from that. I can’t speak for everybody. I’ve been to rallies where people are so mad, they’re very mad. They actually yell and scream at me.”

She said then that the race was about building “a coalition” that “makes sure that we’re functioning as a state and we’re moving forward, not backward."

When President Joe Biden promoted his infrastructure law in Pittsburgh this year, he singled out two of its congressional champions in the audience that day, thanking “Senator Casey and Senator Lamb” of Pennsylvania.

It certainly wasn’t the first time the president had misspoken in acknowledging an audience member, but it was a conspicuous promotion to give Rep. Conor Lamb, particularly because he was seated just feet from his main rival in the Democratic Senate primary, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

“I hope you enjoyed that,” a Biden aide texted a Lamb adviser, sensing, like many others, that Biden had perhaps made a Freudian slip to reveal his partiality in a race in which his aides preferred he remain neutral.

But some close to Lamb later confessed their disappointment that Biden or others in his orbit didn’t offer more than a verbal gaffe to give the campaign a fighting chance, especially given the close history between Biden, 79, and Lamb, 37, a Marine veteran whom Biden had compared to his late eldest son, Beau, multiple times.

Read the full story here.