It’s time to bite your nails| PA 2026 Newsletter
Democrats have the momentum in key Pa. races, but it's all within the margin of error. Happy Halloween and Friday before the election!
📅 There are 4 days until Election Day.
Brace yourselves.
Election Day is Tuesday and some of the Pennsylvania races we’ve been watching play out for months — and in some cases more than a year — are exceptionally close.
🎤 I’m Sam Janesch, The Inquirer’s national political reporter. The four nationally watched U.S. House seats in the state, which could help decide control of the chamber, are all within the margin of error. The state Senate (and a possible trifecta for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro) remains very much up in the air.
Will a blue wave hit the Keystone State? Or will GOP incumbents fend off challenges in arguably their worst political environment of the Trump era (or maybe any era)?
The consequences will be enormous, and Democrats had momentum heading into the final weekend. But it wouldn’t be a Pennsylvania election if it wasn’t all coming down to the wire.
In this edition:
🗳️ Rockin’ in the suburbs: Democrat Bob Harvie holds a narrow advantage over incumbent Republican Brian Fitzpatrick in Bucks County’s hotly contested U.S. House race.
🗳️ Dynamic duo?: Democrats Bob Brooks and Paige Cognetti lead the GOP incumbents in the 7th and 8th Congressional Districts, the two seats Republicans flipped just two years ago.
🗳️ Neck and neck: In the increasingly bitter Harrisburg-area rematch race, Republican Rep. Scott Perry and Democrat Janelle Stelson are in a dead heat.
– Sam Janesch, Fallon Roth, Michelle Baruchman and Gillian McGoldrick (pa2026@inquirer.com)
If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.
The latest
Democrats have momentum, but each swing congressional district has seen twists as candidates make their final push before Election Day when the state could decide House control.
A Republican-leaning, pro-business group has dropped its support of three GOP state House members who supported a labor-friendly bill signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Election monitors from the U.S. Justice Department will be in Philadelphia and three other Pennsylvania counties on Election Day. Here’s what to know about the lawyer overseeing the operation. And here’s what the city commissioners are telling voters to ease their anxiety.
Fitzpatrick has filed a lawsuit to disqualify Democratic Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia from her duties on Bucks County’s election board because of her support for Harvie.
📊 President Donald Trump and Gov. Josh Shapiro are on totally opposite sides of the popularity spectrum in Bucks County’s 1st Congressional District.
Out of the state’s four swing districts, Trump has his worst approval rating in the 1st (35% approve compared to 61% disapprove) and Shapiro has his best (67% approve while 27% disapprove), a new Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll found.
So what does that mean for the closely-watched matchup between Democrat Bob Harvie who is narrowly leading Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick 48% to 46% in the poll?
In many ways, it creates the political environment Democrats have been hoping for since Fitzpatrick first won the seat in 2016 — disdain for Trump driving voters to the polls, and Shapiro’s popularity while he’s on Tuesday’s ballot pulling Harvie and other downballot Democrats across the finish line.
But Fitzpatrick, a five-term incumbent, has survived blue waves and Shapiro’s big margins at the top of the ticket before. And the Republican has spent much of his campaign separating himself from Trump and the GOP as Democrats try to tie them together.
We’ll see which strategy pays off on Tuesday.
Campaign scrapple
Democrats seem to have given up on retaining the 36th Senatorial District seat in Lancaster County, where incumbent James Malone won in an upset in a 2025 special election in the +15 Trump district.
According to media tracker AdImpact, Democrats have spent more than $2 million in the race so far, but it’s nearly stopped entirely since Oct. 13. Just prior to the spending freeze, Malone faced several attacks from Republicans over his past blog posts, including a 2023 Tumblr fan fiction about lesbian Dungeons and Dragons characters.
Shapiro also made ads in support of other state Senate candidates who Democrats are trying to boost — and notably did not make one in support of Malone, whom he previously endorsed.
Over in Jersey, Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross dropped to his knees as he mocked U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s fealty to Trump as he sought boost the campaign of Van Drew’s Democratic challenger, Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock.
Norcross also compared Van Drew to Hitler, our colleague Aliya Schneider reported. The Democratic lawmaker called Van Drew to apologize for his remarks after being contacted by The Inquirer.
👀 What we’re watching
🚨 Philly and its suburbs will be the statewide focus in the final days before the election as the candidates at the top of the ticket look for every last vote with a string of events:
Gov. Josh Shapiro, on his statewide bus tour, is hitting all four of the collar counties over as many days. Sunday is devoted to Philadelphia (including an Eagles watch party in the Northeast) and he’ll finish out Monday in Montgomery County, where the governor grew up and still resides.
Republican nominee Stacy Garrity will also be making a stop in purple Bucks County on the eve of the election. Our poll showed her trailing by a wide margin in the Bucks-based 1st District.
Speaking of Bucks… Democrat Bob Harvie will campaign with Shapiro there on Saturday, but he’ll spend election eve with another potential presidential contender: former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
📫 People voting by mail have until 8 p.m. on Election Day to return their ballots. Democrats are outpacing Republicans in total requests and returns. Here’s more from the state data:
Democrats have requested 841,155 mail ballots, and returned 75% of them, as of Thursday. That’s 629,099 Democratic ballots already cast 4 days out from the election.
Republicans have requested 325,188 mail ballots, and returned 75% of them, for a total of 243,338 GOP mail ballots already cast.
Another 147,669 mail ballots have been requested by unaffiliated and third-party voters, who have returned 63% of them so far, or 93,400 mail ballots cast.
All of us political junkies feel it at the end of every campaign cycle. One candidate said it out loud.
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democratic nominee against Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan in the 8th Congressional District, opened a local candidate forum last week by addressing the elephant in most similar rooms across the country right now — she and other candidates are everywhere right now. And it can feel like a lot.
“I think it’s 11 days,” Cognetti said at the Oct. 23 forum. “You won’t have to see my face on your screen and your television screen every single day.”
The Democrat launched her campaign nearly 14 months ago and — like many others in her position — have been at a near-sprint since.
Is this “just our lives now?” We’ll find out soon.
👋 We hope you have a spooky Halloween weekend filled with sweet treats ahead of next week’s frights: waiting for the election results. 👻 We’ll see you next Friday with our final edition to break it all down.
