Democrats Bob Brooks, Paige Cognetti lead GOP incumbents in pair of key Pa. swing seats

Democratic congressional candidates in a pair of Pennsylvania swing districts have pulled ahead of Republican incumbents before the high-stakes midterm elections — putting them on track to reclaim seats that President Donald Trump helped flip two years ago, according to a new Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll.

Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti — challenging U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Luzerne) in the 8th Congressional District, which stretches across the northeastern corner of the state — is ahead 51% to 46% among likely voters.

Bob Brooks, a union leader and retired firefighter running against U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R., Lehigh) to represent the 7th Congressional District, which covers the Lehigh Valley and Poconos, is up 49% to 44%, the poll found.

The results are within the margin of error. Between 3% and 6% of voters remain undecided, according to the survey of about 400 likely voters in each of the districts from Oct. 16 to 22.

But as Democrats make an aggressive push to win control of the U.S. House amid Trump’s lagging approval ratings, the polling underscores where the party sees two of its best chances of defeating Trump-aligned Republicans — not just in the state, but across the country.

“I just feel Cognetti has the right outlook for Pennsylvania,” said Mercedes Vinsko, a 23-year-old law student from Shavertown, Luzerne County, who wants Democrats to “flood” Congress in the midterms. “I’m hoping a blue wave will trend in a better direction for America.”

The 5-percentage-point leads held by Cognetti and Brooks in their congressional districts represent Democrats’ widest advantages heading into the final stretch of four battleground races in Pennsylvania, according to the poll.

In the Bucks County-based 1st Congressional District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick is seeking another term, Democrat Bob Harvie leads by 2 percentage points. In the Harrisburg-based 10th Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry and Democrat Janelle Stelson are tied, the poll found.

Both parties have invested heavily in all four matchups. Collectively, they have funneled more than $116 million into television ads and have brought in national party leaders to stump for their candidates.

Nowhere have the candidates and their allies spent more, though, than in the Lehigh Valley-based 7th and Scranton-based 8th Congressional Districts, where Mackenzie and Bresnahan narrowly beat multi-term Democrats in 2024. As Trump won the state and surged to the White House that year, Mackenzie and Bresnahan combined to win 10,300 more votes than their opponents out of nearly 790,000 votes cast.

Two years later, both freshman lawmakers have closely aligned themselves with the president — promoting his economic agenda and defending controversies like the war in Iran — while Democrats hope that unpopular alliance benefits their nominees. Trump’s job performance gets low grades across both districts, and particularly in the Lehigh Valley region, where his approval sits at 37%, according to the poll.

Another factor working in Democrats’ favor, observers say, is Gov. Josh Shapiro’s expected strong performance at the top of the ticket as he seeks reelection, which could elevate downballot candidates from his party. In the Lehigh Valley district, Shapiro’s 19-percentage-point lead over Republican Stacy Garrity matches the statewide result from The Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll in September. In the Northeastern Pennsylvania district, Shapiro leads by 11 percentage points, the latest poll found.

» READ MORE: Why Josh Shapiro put himself on the line for the midterms — but still won’t talk about 2028

Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican who represented the Lehigh Valley seat until it flipped blue in 2018, said Shapiro’s commanding performance is “compounding” the issues around Trump’s favorability that are dragging down GOP candidates across the country.

“The challenge for Pennsylvania Republicans is the governor’s race, … Trump’s approval rating, and just the overall midterm environment,” Dent said, calling it a “daunting” mix.

Among the four competitive Pennsylvania races, the 7th District was the first to move further in Democrats’ direction in recent months.

Two frequently cited nonpartisan election ratings groups reclassified the race from a “toss-up” to one that “leans Democratic” as the national environment changed and as Brooks and his national allies poured money into his campaign.

The president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, Brooks was considered a top Democratic recruit after Shapiro encouraged him to run and he consolidated support from across the party’s ideological spectrum. Over the summer, he raised $2.6 million — more than three times as much as Mackenzie brought in and, according to Brooks’ campaign, more than any previous candidate over a similar period in the Lehigh Valley.

“We are running this like we’re losing,” Brooks said in an interview last week.

» READ MORE: Will Democratic leaders’ ‘working-class’ candidate in the high-stakes Lehigh Valley race be the answer they’re looking for?

Mackenzie, a former state representative, has spent much of the recent weeks of the race lobbing attacks at his opponent — alleging Brooks has a troubled business background and personal life. In mailers that went out to voters last week, Mackenzie’s campaign depicted Brooks in a prison jumpsuit with the message, “Is jail the next stop for Bob Brooks?”

Brooks has denounced the accusations, which focus on whether he was required to pay for workers’ compensation insurance for his small business. Brooks said he was not required to do so, and his lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mackenzie’s campaign, which the Republican rejected, then doubled down on the message.

Christopher Karabinus, 51, an educator who lives in Northampton County and responded to the poll, said that he has been inundated with negative political advertising in recent weeks but that it has “zero impact” on how he decides whom to vote for.

He said he is voting for Mackenzie because he trusts that Republicans can get the cost of living “under control.” He said his message to elected officials from both parties is simple: “Democrat, Republican, just unite everybody, solve our problems, make it a better place. Let’s stop the fighting, let’s stop the arguing, and let’s make it a better country.”

Donald Jennings, 85, who lives outside Allentown in Lehigh County, said he plans to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot. He said he has not seen “any Republican’s bills help anybody,” citing cuts to healthcare coverage under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I’m just hoping that [Brooks] will be able to convince people to pass bills that will lower the costs and increase our freedoms,” Jennings said, adding that a Democratic-controlled Congress could serve as a check on the Trump administration.

According to The Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll, 59% of voters in the district disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president. About the same percentage of people believe Mackenzie supports Trump too much, 39%, as those who think his support for Trump is “about right,” 35%.

Rating the candidates’ abilities to handle issues in Congress, the voters polled said Brooks would handle the cost of living, foreign wars, data centers, and corruption better than Mackenzie. Voters were split evenly on who has better character between Brooks and Mackenzie, while more believed Brooks would do “what’s best for ordinary Pennsylvanians.”

Pennsylvania’s 8th District is the only one of the four competitive races in the state that is still considered a true “toss-up” by the ratings experts.

The district covers all of Lackawanna, Wayne, and Pike Counties, as well as parts of Luzerne and Monroe Counties. Trump’s biggest gains in Pennsylvania between his 2020 and 2024 campaigns were in this corner of the state, and his approval ratings now — at 43% approve and 57% disapprove — remain slightly higher than the statewide and national averages.

Bresnahan, who led his family’s electrical contracting business before entering Congress, has largely backed the president’s agenda but distanced himself from his party’s positions on organized labor and has earned union support in his campaign for a second term.

Cognetti, who originally ran for and won the Scranton mayor’s office as an independent, has been a prolific fundraiser — raising $2.5 million to Bresnahan’s nearly $1 million in the recent quarter — and received the backing of national Democrats. She has relentlessly targeted Bresnahan over his stock trading while in office, making fighting public corruption a hallmark of her campaign.

Bresnahan has said that he supports a congressional ban on stock trading and that he does not trade his own stocks.

But Cognetti’s message appears to have gained some traction, according to the poll, which found 51% of voters trusted her to handle issues of corruption compared with 40% who trusted Bresnahan — the largest gap on the topic in any of the matchups across the four competitive districts.

“I just don’t trust him,” said Sandra Carson, 79, a semiretired lawyer and Democrat living in Stroudsburg, Monroe County. “I never have. It’s a vibe thing. Something about him makes me feel that he’s self-interested, and that was long before there was a problem about him trading stock[s] in Congress.”

Carson said she uses her gut rather than disciplined analysis to judge candidates, and the incumbent makes her uneasy.

“He just seems unworthy to me,” Carson said.

Ashley Oliver, 40, of East Stroudsburg, Monroe County, said she always votes Democratic. But this year, the mortgage banker supporting Cognetti said, she is looking forward to voting for change because of ongoing affordability issues. She said she was laid off recently and needed help with food and utilities, leaving her to use programs like SNAP and LIHEAP that she believes Republicans do not support.

“First they make things hard, then they don’t like giving social assistance to help us,” she said. “They’re not the party for that.”

Michael Giordano, 70, of East Stroudsburg, Monroe County, said he is more independent-minded and is voting for Bresnahan. Cognetti is “a little too progressive-liberal,” he said, adding that he likes “the idea of a person with more traditional thinking running the country.”

Immigration, in particular, is on his mind as he votes.

“I’ve been saying for years that if we keep letting the world’s poorest people flood our country, we’ll become a poor country,” Giordano said. “That means we’ll need more housing, energy, water.”

According to the poll, voters tilt toward trusting Bresnahan more than Cognetti on immigration issues. Cognetti led on all other issues voters were asked about: the cost of living, foreign wars, data centers, and corruption. Voters were also more likely to say that she had good character and that she would do “what’s best for ordinary Pennsylvanians.”

Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute, which conducted the poll, said that Democrats consistently outranking Republicans on the ability to handle the cost of living — which remains the top issue on voters’ minds — is a sign of the electorate connecting Trump’s handling of the economy to the downballot Republican candidates. And Trump’s message, polling has shown, is not necessarily meshing with voters’ realities, he said.

“When the president stands up and says, ‘It’s a golden age of American economy,’ you know, people’s, voters’ heads blow up,” Levy said. “You know, because for most people it’s not.”

Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.

More from The Inquirer/NYT/Siena poll

The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University poll of Pennsylvania was funded by a grant from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The poll was designed and conducted independently from the institute.

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