PA Row Offices Are Split Shapiro Leads Dems Ahmad Trails Badly
As was the case in 2016, in 2020, enough Pennsylvania voters split their tickets to enable both Democrats and Republicans to win statewide elections.
It appears that Joe Biden is going to win Pennsylvania by about 77,000 votes. However, Republicans were still able to win two of the three other statewide races that were contested on Tuesday.
Josh Shapiro is going to wind up leading the Democratic ticket in Pennsylvania. He will win his bid to be re-elected as Attorney General, with what looks to be a 300,000 vote margin over his Republican challenger, Heather Heidelbaugh. And with that win, it’s going to take a big upset for any other Democrat to take Shapiro out, if he chooses to run (as he is expected to) in the Gubernatorial Primary in 2022.
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Nina Ahmad, the Democratic candidate for Auditor General, found herself at the opposite end of the vote spectrum. She is currently losing to Republican, Timothy DeFoor by more than 250,000 votes. As the counting of Pennsylvania mail-ballots slogs on inexorably; at best, she could cut DeFoor’s margin down to 175,000 votes. That would put her nearly 450,000 votes behind Shapiro’s showing.
Somewhere in the middle between Shapiro and Ahmad is Joe Torsella. He was the Democratic incumbent in the race for Treasurer. Torsella now trails his GOP challenger, Stacy Garrity, by 109,724 votes. Torsella would have to get more than 95% of the remaining 124,169 uncounted votes in order to catch Garrity.
In 2016, when Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,332 votes, he ran slightly behind Republican Senator, Pat Toomey. Toomey beat Kate McGinty by 86,690 votes.
In the “row office” races that year, Torsella lead the Democratic ticket, beating Republican Otto Voit in the race for Treasurer, by 380,593 votes.
Shapiro won his 2016 race for Attorney General by 165,685 votes, defeating Republican John Rafferty.
Democrat Eugene DePasquale was elected Auditor General in 2016, by 291,500 votes against Republican John Brown. This year DePasquale, tried unsuccessfully to unseat Scott Perry from his U.S. House seat in the 10th Congressional District.