First look: The midterm congressional races to watch in PA

In a visit to Pennsylvania during the 2024 congressional cycle, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson made a prediction: Not only would Republicans defend their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, but they would expand it. 

“I’m convinced that we’re going to grow the House majority,” Johnson said, adding that the coming years in Washington, D.C. would bring “one of the most consequential presidential terms and Congresses in the history of the country.” 

Johnson was right. Republicans would go on to expand their majority in the House, thanks in no small part to successful campaigns in Pennsylvania, where they flipped two seats in their favor – one in the commonwealth’s 7th Congressional District and another in the 8th Congressional District. Then-state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie unseated incumbent U.S. Rep. Susan Wild in the 7th Congressional District, while Rob Bresnahan, the GOP’s 8th Congressional District nominee, defeated then-U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, another Democratic incumbent, to flip the district into Republican hands.

Fast-forward to 2026, and the commonwealth is poised to be ground zero for a hotly contested midterm election cycle that will determine whether Republicans will continue to control both chambers of Congress, or whether Democrats can regain control of the House and obtain a check on President Donald Trump’s administration. 

The path to each of those outcomes will go through Pennsylvania – a state that prognosticators, politicians and commentators alike see as a pivotal battleground for the 2026 midterms. 

“The U.S. House of Representatives is really closely divided, and all it’s going to take is a flip of a few seats to change,” Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, told City & State in an interview. 

“Pennsylvania has at least four congressional districts that are going to be closely contested,” Yost said. “In 2024, they were decided by narrow margins. Those are going to be the places where both parties look to either defend the majority, in the case of Republicans, or to take control of the majority, in the case of Democrats,” he added. 

Political observers expect Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, 8th Congressional District and 10th Congressional District to be the most hotly contested races of the cycle. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has Mackenzie and Perry’s districts rated as toss-ups, while Bresnahan’s seat is rated as “Lean Republican.”

Democrat Chris Deluzio’s 17th Congressional District seat is rated “Likely Democrat” by Cook, though to date, no Republicans have announced a run for Deluzio’s seat. Cook rated the 1st Congressional District seat, held by Fitzpatrick, as “Likely Republican.”

Eli Cousin, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told City & State that the DCCC believes that seats held by Bresnahan, Fitzpatrick, Mackenzie and Perry are all winnable for Democrats. 

“All four of Pennsylvania’s swing-seat Republican congressmen are uniquely vulnerable due to their own failures and self-inflicted wounds,” Cousin said in a statement to City & State. “What Bresnahan, Mackenzie, Fitzpatrick, and Perry all have in common is the fact that they have overseen skyrocketing costs on everything from health care to groceries to electricity – and they will be held accountable at the ballot box next November.” 

Republicans see things a bit differently. Reilly Richardson, a spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said in a statement that the GOP will look to build off national efforts to lower costs and bolster public safety.

“President Trump and House Republicans have been successful in Pennsylvania by being laser-focused on lowering costs, improving community safety, and strengthening American manufacturing,” he said. “While disorganized Democrats continue to nominate out-of-touch candidates who move further left by the day, Republicans are united and ready to win this November.”

In the state’s 1st Congressional District, Democrats are taking another shot at unseating incumbent U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican who serves as chair of the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. 

Since taking office in 2017, Fitzpatrick has faced challenges from several Democratic candidates but has defeated them all over the last decade. In 2024, he beat veteran and Democratic nominee Ashley Ehasz 56.4% to 43.6%. 

This time around, there are a few Democrats looking to challenge Fitzpatrick in the fall, with Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie perhaps the most well-known name. Upon announcing his candidacy in April 2025, Harvie said new leadership in Washington is needed and argued that the policies enacted by the Trump administration are detrimental to Pennsylvanians. 

“I’ve seen firsthand what bad policies from Washington do to our communities. During the second Trump administration, we’re seeing the worst of those policies on overdrive that are hurting working families,” Harvie said when announcing his campaign. “We deserve better.”

Fitzpatrick, in his most recent term, has pushed to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, worked with Democrats to develop legislation that would ban stock trading by members of Congress, and voted against Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Fitzpatrick said amendments to Medicaid in the final product altered his view of the legislation.

“I voted to strengthen Medicaid protections and increase Medicaid spending, to permanently extend middle-class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military,” he said in a statement following a House vote on the bill. “However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis for our PA-1 community.”

Yost said Fitzpatrick has withstood Democratic challenges by avoiding a partisan reputation. “I think he’s able to represent his district in a way that they like,” he said. “It is a district that is evenly divided, so you can’t come across as a staunch partisan.”

Out of all the congressional races during the 2024 presidential election cycle, the race for the 7th Congressional District between then-U.S. Rep. Susan Wild and GOP challenger Mackenzie was the closest: Mackenzie beat Wild 50.5% to 49.5% – by just a little over 4,000 votes. 

The narrow margin of the 2024 contest, coupled with a high-stakes midterm election cycle, makes the 7th Congressional District a must-win for both parties, and Democrats are lining up in droves for a chance to face Mackenzie in November. 

Seven candidates have declared their intent to seek the Democratic nomination to date: Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association President Bob Brooks, former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure, energy engineer Carol Obando-Derstine, Lehigh Valley Young Democrats Vice President Aiden Gonzalez, Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley and perennial candidate Lewis Shupe.

Brooks is viewed as an early favorite, in part due to endorsements from Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, but voters will ultimately have the final say in the May 19 primary election. Shapiro, when endorsing Brooks last December, said the firefighters union leader is “the fighter our friends and neighbors all across the Lehigh Valley deserve in Washington.”

On the other side of the ticket, Democrats have looked to link Mackenzie to Trump, citing his voting record and support for Trump’s budget reconciliation bill. Mackenzie, however, believes that Trump’s agenda, and the reconciliation legislation in particular, will help Americans during a time when voters are increasingly concerned about affordability.

“Every single American will see tax relief from this legislation that is now law,” Mackenzie said during a July 2025 telephone town hall. The Lehigh Valley Congressman also voted in January to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, though he said the law “has actually made healthcare too expensive for many Americans” and called on the U.S. Senate to vote on a healthcare plan that delivers both relief and reform.

Once held by Democratic U.S. Rep Matt Cartwright, the state’s 8th Congressional District flipped in 2024 when Rob Bresnahan upset the longtime Democratic congressman by 6,252 votes. 

Bresnahan told City & State at the beginning of his term that his top priorities included affordability, border security, unleashing the state’s energy economy, and recruiting more first responders. In his first term, the Republican congressman introduced a range of bills, including legislation to promote participation in job training programs, bolster protections for correctional officers and streamline paperwork for veterans’ claims, the last of which was approved by the U.S. House. 

Bresnahan, who formerly chaired a joint apprenticeship training committee, sponsored legislation to increase outreach efforts to encourage more students to enroll in registered apprenticeship programs. He also backed an effort to ban congressional stock trades, but has drawn criticism for his own trading in Medicaid- and data center-related stocks while in office. 

He’s also drawn a challenge from Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, a Democrat who is seeking her party’s nomination and hoping to unseat Bresnahan later this year. 

When launching her campaign for Congress, Cognetti said she’s running to “take on a corrupt Washington that has left our community behind while politicians get richer, our costs keep rising, and we get sold out.” She also chided Bresnahan for vowing to ban congressional stock trading, accusing him of “playing the stock market while voting to screw us over in Washington.”

Speaking to City & State late last year, Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Greg Rothman said defending the 7th and 8th Congressional District seats will be absolutely critical in the midterm cycle. 

“The two new ones – Bresnahan and Mackenzie – those are the ones that made the difference in flipping,” Rothman told City & State. “We flipped those. But we’ll protect them all, and we'll work for all of them.”

In the 10th Congressional District, Democrats have long sought to send U.S. Rep. Scott Perry packing, but the conservative former leader of the House Freedom Caucus has proven to be a tough candidate to beat. 

Democrats came close in 2024, when former TV anchor Janelle Stelson lost to Perry by 5,133 votes. Two years later, Stelson is hoping that the race will break in her favor; she announced another run for the 10th District seat in July 2025, vowing to lower costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, defend abortion rights and secure the Southern border. 

Matt Beynon, a Perry campaign spokesperson, said shortly after Stelson’s entry into the race that she “will lose again because the Voters of the 10th congressional district know they have a leader in Scott Perry fighting for them.”

But Stelson isn’t necessarily guaranteed a rematch against Perry. Also running for the Democratic nod is Justin Douglas, a Dauphin County Commissioner who announced his bid in September 2025. Carlisle resident Jason Cass and veteran William Lillich are also seeking the 10th District Democratic nomination. 

Yost noted that Democrats may have the wind at their backs, given that the party that controls the White House typically struggles in midterm elections. He also said that gubernatorial candidates at the top of the ticket could play a major role in how downballot races for Congress and state legislative seats play out. 

“What happens in the gubernatorial race is going to have consequences downballot,” he said. “I think the Republicans endorsed Stacy Garrity early because I think they feel that she’s a quality candidate who can challenge Shapiro. She’s shown she can earn a lot of votes, and that’s going to be important for what happens in some of these other races. Josh Shapiro wins at the margins. He won in 2022 – that’s going to have consequences for not only the congressional races, but the state House and state Senate.”