the margin is just 627 votes. there s going to be a lot of back and forth in that process, craig. one of the strategies that folks are pointing to that conor lamb employed was his ability to sort of instance himself from nancy pelosi, the house minority leader that s been polarizing for some time. how was he able to do that? reporter: exactly. i think he was able to do it to a large degree because he had a base of support here. i want to play you that sound, conor lamb on morning joe this morning when he was asked about party leadership. i have said and i continue to say that i think we need new leadership at the top of both parties in the house. and so i would like to see someone besides nancy pelosi run and that s who i would support. reporter: this is carnegie, a town of 8,000, old steel and coal mining unionto town here.
on saturday, there were hundreds of people filtering through, canvassing. a lot of these people got involved in the women s march in 2017. a lot of these democrats don t need necessarily the d.c. operations because of groups like indivisible, in their local county parties, where they ve built local apparatuses. in the instance of conor lamb, he was able to work of 0 of that and not realize on the operations like republicans did in this race. mr. haake, was been the reaction on the hill? reporter: republicans here have been trying everything they can to localize the race in pennsylvania, to make it all about the local issues and the local environment and the way that conn aor lamb ran his race rather than have it be about the national environment and national headwinds. paul ryan laughed it off a
the president s economic agenda. i think that s part of what the president saw in larry kudlow. you know that the president relates to the world very much through television. yes. reporter: he likes his advisers to be tv friendly. i think larry kudlow fits that bill. an economist turned pundit. thank you very much, eamon javers. in the closely-watched congressional election in pennsylvania s 18th congressional district, nbc projects conor lamb as the apparent winner, a stunning upset. president trump won that district by 20 points in 2016. rick saccone, the gop candidate, plans to challenge the results. nbc s vaughn hillyard is outside conor lamb s campaign headquarters in pennsylvania. nbc s garrett haake is on capitol hill. vaughn, let me start with you, at this point is a recount
little bit this morning, describing conor lamb and his apparent victory. take a listen to some of paul ryan. we need to make sure our candidates aren t massively outraised and outspent on tv as was the case between these two candidates. the second point i would say is both of these people, the candidates, the republican and the democrat, ran as conservatives, ran as pro-gun, pro-life, anti-nancy-pelosi conservatives. reporter: ryan having some fun at lamb s expense there, he made that comment a couple of different times during that news conference. but democrats pushed back and said, what you saw there was somebody running who fits their district. democrats argue they re trying to run candidates like that around the country. lamb had some advantageous, he didn t face a primary, didn t get pushed to the left in a conservative leaning district. but republicans behind the scenes have been much more willing to concede that they got caught flat-footed in this race, that it needs to be a