On November 5, Pennsylvanians voted in one of the year’s closest U.S. Senate races. With 99% of the vote counted, Republican Dave McCormick leads Democratic incumbent Bob Casey by just 0.2% of the vote. The tight margin means the Pennsylvania Senate race went to an automatic recount, which is currently underway. 

Despite the tight margin, it’s highly unlikely that the recount will change the outcome. A recent FairVote report found that margins of a statewide race must be exceptionally close – less than 0.1% – for a change in outcome to be plausible. The margin in the Pennsylvania Senate race is well outside that range.

FairVote’s report looked at 6,929 statewide general elections from 2000 through 2023. During that time, there were 36 completed statewide recounts. Only three of those 36 recounts changed the outcome of their races. In all three, the original margin of victory was less than 0.06%. Most recently in Pennsylvania, a recount in the 2022 GOP Senate primary between McCormick and Mehmet Oz, who were separated by just 0.07%, did not change the outcome in that race.

Recounts tend to lead to small vote gains for both sides, and typically widen the gap between the top two candidates instead of decreasing it. The same thing is likely to happen in the recount of the Pennsylvania Senate race, at the cost of more than $1 million in taxpayer money. 

Rather than requiring an automatic recount in any election where the margin of victory is less than 0.5%, Pennsylvania could save time and resources by lowering that threshold to 0.1%.

Read FairVote’s full report on recounts here.