Casey sounds as if he likes his chances tonight

When you’re a Democrat running statewide in Pennsylvania, you always hope lots of voters show up to vote.
It’s simple. The state has more than 1.1 million more Democrats than Republicans.
So naturally U.S. Sen. Bob Casey was pleased today about reports of high voter turnout statewide.
“It’s very positive when turnout is as high as it is in this kind of year,” Mr. Casey said at a 4:30 p.m. news conference at the Hilton Scranton & Conference Center. “People know a lot about what’s at stake, they know exactly where the candidates stand. I think that’s true in the race that I’m in as well as the other races.”
Mr. Casey said he got an indication turnout would be high as he travelled the state the last few days.
“I got a real sense leading up to this that people are ready to vote and we’ll see those numbers tonight,” he said. “I feel pretty optimistic about turnout.”
For the second day in a row, Mr. Casey was dressed in a collared shirt and a sweater, but without a tie. It’s hard to remember seeing him without a tie much.
He sounded confident about his chances against Republican Tom Smith of Armstrong County, despite polls that showed the race tightened.
“Well, this is my fifth general election so I’ve been around a little while. But most races in this state are pretty close. And a lot of these statewide races will be relatively close,” he said.
A Philadelphia TV reporter pointed out his last race wasn’t that close. He defeated U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum by 17.4 percentage points in 2006.
“Well, sometimes you have a big year,” Mr. Casey said. “I feel good about where we are. ”
Mr. Casey said he wished he would have been able to air television commercials earlier.
“You always wish you can. But the nature of our race, I knew from the beginning since at least the spring, that if the dollar amounts that were expended by the other side were expended, it would be a different race than it looked in the summer,” Mr. Casey said.
He led Mr. Smith by 20 points in some polls.
Mr. Casey said he planned to watch the election results come in at his Hill Section home until he got a “sense of the race” and would then return to the Hilton for his party.
Asked how he felt waiting for the results to come in, he joked that “It’s always fun.”
“It’s always exciting. You have both excitement and nerves, but if you feel like you’re going to do pretty well that obviously makes it a little better. But I don’t think we’ll have any sense of this race until, I don’t think it will be late, but I don’t think it will be one of those races that they call in the first 30 minutes or so. I’m just glad people are voting. The numbers seem very high.”
– BORYS KRAWCZENIUK