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Fetterman bested Biden across Pennsylvania to flip a U.S. Senate seat
By Júlia Ledur, Lauren Tierney and Dan Keating
November 9, 2022 at 4:28 p.m. EST
During an acceptance speech in Pittsburgh early Wednesday, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) credited his “Every county, every vote” campaign slogan for his success flipping one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seats.
Fetterman bested Republican Mehmet Oz by outperforming President Biden’s 2020 vote share in almost every county, including in rural areas where Trump racked up votes.
“I never expected that we were going to turn these red counties blue,” he said. “But we did what we needed to do and we had that conversation across every one of those counties.”
Despite expectations of a red wave, Fetterman narrowly flipped the seat, fueling Democratic hopes of retaining control of the Senate. While Oz won many of those GOP-friendly rural areas, Fetterman outperformed Biden especially in western Pennsylvania. In Warren County, where most registered voters are Republican, Fetterman outpaced Biden’s vote share by 4.2 percentage points.
The urban core and suburbs around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia gave him an expectedly wide margin, of 550,000 votes.
But he lost the rest of the state. His success, however, was in increasing margins in conservatives areas that Biden failed to convince. Fetterman lost in smaller cities and rural areas by 390,000 votes. In a decisive win for the presidential race in 2020, Biden flipped Pennsylvania blue. But he fell 645,000 votes short in these same areas. If Fetterman had performed as badly as Biden did in the rest of the state, he would have lost the election.
“This race is for the future of every community all across Pennsylvania. For every small town or person that ever felt left behind, for every job that has ever been lost, for every factory that was ever closed, for every person that works hard but never got ahead,” Fetterman said in his acceptance speech. “I’m proud of what we ran on.”
Election results from the Associated Press, as of 2:15 p.m. Eastern Nov. 9, when 94.2 percent of votes had been counted in Pennsylvania.
By Júlia Ledur
Júlia Ledur is a graphics reporter covering foreign news at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2021, she worked as a graphics editor at the COVID Tracking Project at the Atlantic. Previously, she was on the graphics team at Reuters, covering Latin American politics, the environment and social issues with data and visuals. Twitter
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By Lauren Tierney
Lauren Tierney is a Senior Graphics Reporter at The Washington Post. Before joining the Post in 2017, she was a Graphics Editor at National Geographic Magazine. Twitter
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By Dan Keating
Dan Keating analyzes data for projects, stories, graphics and interactive online presentations for the national Health and Science team. Twitter
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