Check 2020 General Election results for Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA - Joe Biden won his native Pennsylvania, with the AP declaring him the winner Saturday after it determined the remaining ballots left to be counted would not allow Republican President Donald Trump to catch up.
Trump and Biden, the former vice president and Scranton native, hotly contested the 20 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, which had been one of the few remaining states to be claimed in their battle for the presidency.
A flurry of litigation over voting and vote counting was brought by Trump and the Republican Party in recent days, particularly over Pennsylvania’s year-old law that greatly expanded mail-in voting.
FULL COVERAGE: 2020 ELECTION
Trump did not concede Saturday and issued a statement promising unspecified legal action.
PENNSYLVANIA ELECTION RESULTS:
In addition to choosing between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Pennsylvanians also decided races for Congress, the General Assembly, and a trio of statewide offices — attorney general, auditor general, and treasurer.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 1
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has been elected to a third-term serving Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district, defeating democratic challenger Christina Finello, according to a projection Wednesday afternoon from the Associated Press.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 7
Freshman Democrat U.S. Rep. Susan Wild defended her Allentown-area seat against Republican nominee Lisa Scheller, a former Lehigh County commissioner who started a pigment manufacturer for paints, coatings and inks and touts her background as someone recovered from addiction who advocates for people in recovery.
Wild, a prominent lawyer in Allentown, scored a 10-percentage-point thumping of her Republican opponent in 2018′s campaign for what was an open seat.
The district is daunting for a Republican. Democrats have a 60,000-voter registration advantage, and Wild had a 3-to-1 campaign cash advantage going into July.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 8
Cartwright, a four-term Democratic member of Congress from northeastern Pennsylvania, won reelection in a district where Trump is popular.
This time, Cartwright was challenged by Jim Bognet, a first-time candidate who won a six-person GOP primary, in part, by promising to be a staunch Trump ally.
The district is anchored by the cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, both Democratic bastions. But the party’s voter-registration advantage in the district — still at a considerable 58,000 — is shrinking, and Republican hopes of capturing it are perennial.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 10
Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry has won a fifth term in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District in the area around Harrisburg and York in central Pennsylvania.
Perry beat Democrat Eugene DePasquale, the state’s two-term auditor general.
Perry, a staunch Trump supporter and owner of one of the most conservative voting records in the U.S. House, hung on for another term in a district that has been gradually turning less conservative.
The race was Pennsylvania’s most expensive this year, attracting more than $11 million in spending by outside groups after a Democratic opponent with little name recognition came within 2.5 percentage points of knocking off Perry in 2018.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 16
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly won a sixth term in a northwestern Pennsylvania district against a political newcomer, teacher Kristy Gnibus, after Kelly won a race, into which national Democrats poured cash, by 4 percentage points in 2018.
Republicans have a small registration advantage, about 22,000, but Democratic parts of the district took the same conservative turn in 2016 as other historically Democratic parts of Pennsylvania where residents are whiter, less affluent and less educated.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 17
Lamb won a second full term in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in the Pittsburgh area, beating Republican Sean Parnell in a race The Associated Press called Saturday.
Lamb declared victory late Wednesday, but the AP had not called the race at the time.
Lamb became a Democratic star in 2018 when he won two races in two districts that had been hostile to Democrats.
One was a special election in a district President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points, and the other was a general election in a redrawn district against a three-term incumbent.
LEGISLATURE
All 203 state House seats and half the 50-person Senate went before the voters, and Republicans kept majority control of both chambers.
At least two incumbent Democrats and a Republican state senator lost.
First-term Democratic Rep. Wendy Ullman of Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs was defeated by Republican Shelby Labs. Democratic hopes of regaining a Senate majority began to be extinguished when Republican Devlin Robinson unseated Democratic Sen. Pam Iovino in a suburban Pittsburgh district.
Republican state Sen. Tom Killion, who has represented a Delaware County district since 2016, after a long career in the state House, was defeated by Democrat John Kane, a plumbers union administrator.
Just one state Senate race remains uncalled, a western Pennsylvania district in which 10-year Democratic Sen. Jim Brewster is in a tight contest against Republican Nicole Ziccarelli.
The results so far mean the chamber will remain in Republican hands next session. The current Senate is split 28-21, plus an independent who caucuses with the GOP.
Democrats went into the election needing a net pickup of nine seats to regain the state House majority, and Ullman’s loss made the margin 10. But only seven Republican-held seats remain uncalled.
The most notable uncalled race is in Allegheny County, where House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody drew a strong challenge from Republican Carrie DelRosso.
Two years ago, Democrats gained 11 seats to get to 93 members, versus 110 Republicans.
ATTORNEY GENERAL
Shapiro, a former state lawmaker and county commissioner in the Philadelphia suburbs, won the contest to remain the state’s top law enforcement official. He beat Republican Heather Heidelbaugh, a lawyer from Mount Lebanon and a former Allegheny County Council member.
Shapiro, a resident of Abington, has been outspoken about election preparation and proper vote counting in recent weeks, and a regular on television newscasts about the campaign and canvassing in Pennsylvania.
His win of a second term keeps him on the list of potential gubernatorial hopefuls in two years, when Wolf is term-limited.
“Once again, we proved that we can overperform the top of the ticket and earn support from across party lines and ideological lines, based on our record,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro took over following the debacle that was Democrat Kathleen Kane’s term in office. Kane resigned in the fourth year of her term after being convicted of fraud and later served jail time.
Shapiro oversaw the investigation that culminated in the August 2018 release of a grand jury report that found about 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania had sexually abused children for seven decades, and that their higher-ups helped cover it up.
Heidelbaugh had described Shapiro as lacking experience as a courtroom lawyer and having chased headlines to feed political ambition. She cited his recent and repeated publicizing of coronavirus-related price gouging cases.
TREASURER
Republican Stacy Garrity and incumbent Democrat Joe Torsella are waiting to learn who will be the state’s treasurer come January.
Garrity, 56, a political unknown, could unseat Torsella, widely viewed as a potential gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate. She retired as a colonel in 2016 after 30 years with the Army Reserves and is vice president of a tungsten smelting plant.
Garrity, who lives in Athens in Bradford County, wants to use the Treasury Department’s leverage to push lawmakers and the governor to limit spending to money that has been formally appropriated by the Legislature and end the executive branch’s spending of money outside the pre-approval process.
Torsella had said his major accomplishments as state treasurer include setting up a scholarship program that begins for children at birth and leading a lawsuit against large Wall Street banks over their bond fees.
The lawsuit resulted in a nearly $400 million settlement over the price fixing claims, money that is being split with other plaintiffs. He has also moved more of the state’s investments into index funds, putting the state on track to save hundreds of millions of dollars in investment fees in the coming decades.
Torsella, 57, a resident of Flourtown, served as former President Barack Obama’s envoy for United Nations management and reform, headed the National Constitution Center, and was former Gov. Ed Rendell’s choice to serve as chairperson of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.
AUDITOR GENERAL
The race for auditor general pitted Republican Timothy L. DeFoor, a county controller in central Pennsylvania, against Democrat Nina Ahmad, a former deputy Philadelphia mayor.
DeFoor will be the state’s next auditor general after outpacing Ahmad.
DeFoor is Black and Ahmad was born in Bangladesh, so in January the state’s first elected “row officer” of color will begin work.
Ahmad, 61, who has a doctorate in chemistry, has said she wants to expand the office’s traditional watchdog role so that it also examines how equitably public money gets distributed. She wants to focus on charter schools and do what she can to expand high-speed internet.
DeFoor, 58, the elected controller in Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg, touts his experience as making him uniquely qualified for the office. He has spent three decades conducting governmental audits and fraud investigations for the state inspector general, the state attorney general and a large hospital system.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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