Inside Pennsylvania's Toughest Races (and Its Toughest Republican)

Former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb has read more Pennsylvania polling than almost anyone who isn’t paid to, probably because, for nearly a decade, that was a big part of his day job. Lamb won a hard-fought March 2018 special election by 627 votes in my home district that Donald Trump had carried by nearly 20 points, then won the redrawn 17th twice before coming up short in the 2022 Senate primary to John Fetterman. He still remains an active observer interviewing the Democrats running in 2026. We spoke a month out from the midterms, and he explained that Democrats have plenty of reasons to be excited about the state of play. 

The New York Times/Siena/Inquirer poll released Sept. 24 had incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro beating Stacy Garrity 58% to 38%, with 33% of voters saying they had never heard of the state treasurer. Trump's favorability in the same survey sat at 38% to 61%. Franklin & Marshall put Democratic challengers ahead in the 7th and 10th Districts the same week. Charlie Cook has called this a “red undertow” election: Trump’s numbers drag Republicans down without much affection for Democrats pulling anyone up.

“Those three seem like obvious pickups to me,” Lamb said. “We have strong candidates in all three. They've been fundraising, and they look good in the polls. Two of those three were represented by Democrats when I was in Congress.”

Brian Fitzpatrick’s Bucks County 1st is the only Pennsylvania district Kamala Harris carried, by 0.3 points, and Fitzpatrick still won it by nearly 13 on the same ballot. He entered July with $6.4 million to county Commissioner Bob Harvie's $795,000. Cook rates the race Likely Republican. Two Democratic internal polls in August had Fitzpatrick up four and then one; a Republican poll had him up nine.

“The easiest seat on paper for Democrats is in Bucks County, and that'll probably be the hardest one to flip, because it has a moderate Republican member,” Lamb said. “He gets union endorsements. He’s a popular person there. So that one's harder, but we have a good candidate who's making a big fight of it.”

Bucks Democrats swept the county row offices last November, and Harvie has won countywide twice. Fitzpatrick’s numbers barely moved. He co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus, breaks with Trump often enough to have drawn pointed presidential criticism back in May, and has beaten every challenger by nine points or more since 2018. Southwestern Pennsylvania natives like myself will note the similarities to the late Tim Murphy, a practicing psychologist with strong ties to local labor whose 2017 scandal and resignation opened the way for Conor Lamb’s surprising red-district victory a few months later. 

Lamb's dark horse is Mike Kelly's 16th District, Erie down through Mercer and Lawrence counties to Butler, a seat Kelly has held since 2011. The seemingly unbeatable car dealer Kelly, won it by 27 points in 2024. Cook scores the district R+11. Prediction markets give the Democrat, Iraq War veteran and engineer Justin Wagner, about a 9% chance, but both Lamb and I think he has the background and persona needed to hold his own in that kind of district.

“I’ve thought all along there would be one that sneaks up on people,” Lamb said. “Not to say it’s definitely going to happen, but the Kelly seat, from Erie down to Butler, got pretty close in 2018, when our candidate came up a few points short. Wagner is making a fight of it. That could be the one.”

Lawyer and Marine Corps veteran Ron DiNicola lost that 2018 race by about four points. Kelly is 78 and past his campaigning prime but had $1.1 million on hand this spring to Wagner's $13,735. In the May primary, with both men unopposed, Wagner received 49,096 Democratic votes to Kelly's 44,083 Republican ones. And Trump's political operation has told Republican incumbents that any seat he carried by 15 points or fewer should be treated as a toss-up.

“Fifteen points is a huge margin for Trump, and members in those seats usually assume they're safe,” Lamb said. “Now they've been told every seat like that is a toss-up.”

Lamb also flagged the 9th, Dan Meuser’s anthracite-country seat, where Rachel Wallace, a longtime federal employee who has held a number of high-profile roles, has proven to be a strong campaigner. “She’s young and a hard worker, and she's made a positive, generational-change argument that could sneak up and surprise some people,” he said. However, Cook’s own battleground survey suggests Democratic gains will mostly stay inside districts Trump won by 10 or fewer, which would leave both of these seats in GOP control. 

The state-level races are probably going to be most impactful for those of us hoping that the legislature ends up making smart moves on issues such as data center construction, skill game taxation, and public charter school busing. Democrats hold the state House 103-100, and Republicans hold the Senate 27-23, a chamber they have controlled since 1994. Democrats need three Senate pickups for a majority, or two for a tie that Lt. Gov. Austin Davis can break on procedure. Their top targets, the 6th, 16th, 24th and 40th Districts, went for Trump by between two and 12 points in 2024. Shapiro is on a roll, raising $13.3 million in the latest reporting period to Garrity’s $1.8 million.

“You’re really going to see Shapiro’s influence there, because he's put a lot of his own money into those races, and he could very much end up with a governing trifecta, which changes a lot in this state,” Lamb said. “He hasn't had as active a legislative agenda because of his impasse with the Senate Republicans. All of a sudden he'd have to really legislate in the new year.”

A trifecta could give Shapiro a governing record to carry into a presidential primary that many Pennsylvanians have already told pollsters they would rather he skip. My retired schoolteacher mother, for example, has said that while she’s also voting for Austin Davis, she’s pinning her hopes on Shapiro serving out his term in Harrisburg.

Lamb cautions that a midterm sweep, like most midterm sweeps in the past, would be a repudiation of the party holding the White House rather than an affirmation of Democratic policies. “A big Democratic victory in early November won't automatically mean widespread popular support for Democrats or the things they want to do,” he said. “But this is a first step, showing the public that Trump isn't all-powerful and that there's such a thing as accountability when you break every promise you made on the campaign trail.”

In 2018, that desire for accountability — from a public growing increasingly tired of Trump two years into his first term, and eager for a grown-up in the room — helped Lamb eke out that career-defining win in MAGA-fied Washington County. He will be closely watching candidates like Justin Wagner to see if they can pull off similar upsets. 

Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work.