Judge Daniel McCaffery (left) and Megan McCarthy King (right).

Court watchers and politicos said Pennsylvania Republicans had reason to celebrate the result of the single partisan statewide race on the ballot, for two seats on the Superior Court, with each major party electing one new judge.

The result, observers said, bucked a trend toward election of Democrats to statewide offices in the past decade, a trend that continued to accelerate in local races in the Philadelphia suburbs.

On Tuesday, four candidates for the state Superior Court faced off for two open seats on the intermediate appellate court bench. By Wednesday afternoon, with 99% of the votes counted, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Daniel McCaffery, a Democrat, and Chester County prosecutor Megan McCarthy King, a Republican, appeared to be the winners, taking the top spots in the race. The pair were poised to edge out the two other candidates, Democrat Amanda Green-Hawkins and Cumberland County Judge Christylee Peck, by a thin margin— slightly more than two percentage points from the highest to the lowest vote-getter.

McCaffery, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, earned 1,242,716 votes, barely edging out the 1,236,786 cast for King. Green-Hawkins trailed King by less than 32,000 votes, earning 1,204,875. Peck was the lowest vote-getter, according to the numbers, having 1,148,106 ballots cast for her.

"That's fairly rare to see where it gets split like that, and so close. That's a big surprise," G. Terry Madonna, a political analyst and director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, said. "I thought that Dems would win the statewide Superior Court election likely because of what we knew was going to happen in the Philadelphia suburbs, where the Democrats, for more than a decade, have been making inroads."

Several other political observers also said the results were unexpected.

"In this political environment, when you see how much money was spent, I think it's very surprising the Democrats did not win both," Larry Ceisler of Ceisler Media said.

Christopher Borick, political science professor at Muhlenberg College, offered similar sentiments, saying that, given how the political headwinds appeared to favor the Democrats nationally, the expectation was for a strong Democratic showing.

"As the results show, that wasn't the case with a split ticket," Borick said. "That to me is a little surprising."

Veteran Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas, however, said there was a lot of enthusiasm surrounding the two GOP candidates, who, he said, had great credentials and campaigned well.

"Megan King's victory is clearly a nice shot in the arm for the state GOP," Nicholas said. "I'm sorry Judge Peck didn't pick up the other slot."

Bar Rating's Impact

Judicial races are typically low-information contests, where candidates are restricted from soliciting for donations or discussing topics as openly as nonjudicial candidates. To help bridge this gap, bar associations will evaluate the candidates and publish ratings for the public.

In the spring, the Pennsylvania Bar Association rated McCaffery as "highly recommended," and rated both King and Peck as "recommended." Green-Hawkins received a "not recommended" rating.

However, the perennial question is, how effective are those ratings on the choice in the ballot box?

According to some, a positive rating from the bar-aligned judicial rating group could have provided a boost.

The "not recommended" rating, judicial selection watchers said, could have been a deciding factor in such a close race.

"When you're looking at a subtle difference in the number of votes, I think the bar recommendation does matter," Ceisler said. "When you can do negative ads and negative digital saying you're 'not recommended' by the bar, to a certain voter that makes a difference."

Nicholas said the bar rating was something he used to help develop a campaign theme for the GOP candidates.

"I pounded on the theme that [the Republic ticket] was the only endorsed team. Because Amanda Green-Hawkins was 'not recommended' by the bar, they couldn't say that," he said. "I think that may have had a helping hand somewhat too."

Mark Harris, a partner at the media agency Cold Spark, which made some of the TV ads for King, agreed that Green-Hawkins' "not recommended" rating was likely a challenge for her campaign, and being able to run as a "recommended team" was helpful. However, he said, it's also likely not many voters were aware of the ratings.

Harris credited the Republicans' success with picking candidates who campaigned hard.

"Due to the Democratic spending advantage and just McCaffery being a big name, a lot of people expected he was going to run away with this thing, and that's not what happened and I think that's a credit to the campaign that Megan McCarthy King and Christylee Peck ran," Harris said. "They worked hard."

King, he noted, also faced negative ads tying her to national politics, but to overcome that message, he said they focused their TV ads on telling her story as a prosecutor and mother.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, McCaffery credited the hard work of his team getting out his campaign's message to "every corner of Pennsylvania."

"I will take the stories and the concerns of each and every person that I met with me to the Superior Court," he said, thanking his supporters and saying he was both "thrilled" and "humbled" by the win.

When it comes to using the 2019 results as an indicator of how 2020 might shake out, political observers said judicial races—especially those taking place in an off-year—are unique, but noted that long-standing trends of the southwest turning red and the southeast turning blue seem to have solidified in 2019.

And, according to Nicholas, that may be something the GOP might want to watch out for.

"It's great that you took over Greene and Fayette county, but it takes a lot of Greene and Fayette counties to make up for Chester County," he said.