Examining Democrats’ 2025 Victories in Pennsylvania and What They Could Mean for the Future

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept this year’s state Supreme Court retention contests, which could be interpreted as a victory for Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) as he looks ahead to 2026, and perhaps beyond.

— In swing counties like Erie and Northampton, Democratic county executive nominees outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 showing, including with Hispanic voters.

— Republicans did continue to narrow Democrats’ statewide voter registration advantage throughout 2025, although Democrats did end the year on a better note.

After a strong 2025, PA Democrats aim for a repeat performance in 2026

Last month, three Democratic justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court were up for retention and each won another 10-year term. On its face, such a result isn’t all that surprising. According to the last Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1968, Supreme Court justices are elected to an initial 10-year term, then face an up-or-down vote on another 10-year term. Since then only one Justice was denied retention, when in 2005 a midnight pay raise in Harrisburg outraged Pennsylvanians against all public officials.

Nevertheless, Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht all managed to secure a little more than 60% of the vote in the ultimate purple state, against the headwinds of a well-financed conservative opposition. Remember too that this same trio memorably swung the majority of the court from Republican to Democratic back when they first won in 2015, a rare down-ballot victory for Democrats in the Obama years.

Furthermore, Pennsylvania Democrats also easily won a Commonwealth Court seat as well as a Superior Court seat, carrying each statewide seat by more than a dozen points apiece.

First-term Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) went on a media tour to celebrate this Democratic sweep of judicial races, as he looks ahead to his own reelection campaign in 2026. Shapiro is aiming to build off this momentum by helping his party win the four competitive congressional seats held by Republican incumbents in the commonwealth; as well as flipping the three state Senate seats necessary to give Democrats the majority, as they hope to achieve their first elected state government trifecta since 1978 (a brief, bare Senate majority in 1993-1994 came from a party switch).

Of course, Shapiro is also betting that an impressive performance up and down the ballot in 2026 will impress enough national pundits and fundraisers ahead of his own potential 2028 presidential campaign.

Shapiro has, in fact, already faced this type of situation—running for reelection with his eyes on another possible office—twice before. When he ran for his second term as a Montgomery County commissioner in 2015, then-state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s career began to fall apart, prompting him to look ahead to seeking that office in 2016. Then in 2020 he ran for reelection as state attorney general, even as it was an open secret that he was very likely running for governor in 2022.

Yet, despite Shapiro’s high approval numbers, state Republicans are actually optimistic about this 2026 race, as they recruited a credible candidate in state Treasurer Stacy Garrity (R). With two statewide wins under her belt, Garrity is a considerably stronger candidate than 2022 and 2018 nominees Doug Mastriano and Scott Wagner, who were a pair of especially conservative state senators who both lost in landslides. Garrity may have to face Mastriano in a primary, though, as the latter is considering another run.

At the same time, both of Garrity’s victories came in 2020 and 2024, when Donald Trump was at the top of the ballot boosting turnout. Shapiro, on the other hand, has a longer electoral record that includes wins in non-presidential years: aside from capturing the governorship in 2022, he also won terms as a legislator in 2006 and 2010, and was elected to the Montgomery County Commission in 2011 and 2015. Shapiro and Garrity shared the same ballot once before, in 2020, when then-AG Shapiro ran ahead of Garrity and all the other national and statewide candidates.

Mapping out the 2025 Erie and Northampton County executive results

The 2025 Blue Wave wasn’t limited to statewide judicial races either, as Pennsylvania Democrats scored victories throughout the commonwealth. For example, in the key Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump counties of Erie and Northampton, Democrats won the major countywide executive contests. I mapped out those results to compare them to the 2024 presidential race, which helps illustrate where the party gained ground.

Map 1: 2024 presidential results in Erie County

Note: Key: Navy 65%+ Democratic, Blue 60-64.9%, Royal Blue 55%-59.9%, Dodger Blue 50%-54.9%, Light Sky Blue <50%. Light Salmon <50% Republican, Coral 50%-54.9%, Orange Red 55%-59.9%, Red 60%-64.9%, Maroon 65%+. Ties are yellow. The same color scheme is used for all four maps in this article.

Source: All maps by Nick Field via Dave’s Redistricting App.

Erie County is such a reliable bellwether that it’s supported the statewide winner in 19 of the past 20 presidential elections, and in 2024 Trump won Erie by just over a point. Trump was able to flip the county by limiting Harris’s margins in the city of Erie, as well as winning over some precincts in surrounding suburban Millcreek Township.

This year, however, Democratic county executive nominee Christina Vogel easily dispatched Republican incumbent Brenton Davis by 25 points. Vogel ran up the score in Erie while sweeping Millcreek. Her coalition continued to spill over into Fairview, Girard, Harborcreek, McKean and Summit townships, as shown in Map 2.

Map 2: 2025 county executive results in Erie County

On the other side of the commonwealth, in the Lehigh Valley, Trump prevailed by 1.8% in Northampton County last year. Last month, however, the Democratic nominee for county executive won in a landslide: Tara Zrinski (D) triumphed by 19 points over Tom Giovanni (R).

Map 3 shows Northampton County’s result in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats who carry the county often create a line of light blue precincts connecting Bethlehem and Easton, which represent the dark blue clusters of precincts in the west and east, respectively. But, as the map shows, Trump broke that line, as there are several red precincts in between the cities.

Map 3: 2024 presidential results in Northampton County

Zrinski, on the other hand, restored the line of blue precincts between the two cities while also winning some other places a little bit further out from the cities. Map 4 shows the breakdown from last month’s election.

Map 4: 2025 county executive results in Northampton County

Demographically, Northampton is one of Pennsylvania’s most Hispanic counties, giving us the opportunity to examine the increasingly crucial Hispanic vote here. Table 1 isolates three precincts in Bethlehem where Hispanic residents make up a majority of the voting age population. Though all three of these precincts are colored the darkest shade of blue on the maps we just saw, 2024 represented a relatively weak performance for Democrats. However, the numbers that Zrinski posted last month were even better than what Joe Biden got in 2020, although of course turnout is significantly lower in an off-year election than a presidential election.

Table 1: Recent results in heavily Hispanic parts of Northampton County

Voter registrations remain a lagging indicator

Finally, let’s finish with a look at Pennsylvania’s voter registration trends. After a brutal 2024, when heavy registration losses presaged a Trump victory in the Keystone State, Pennsylvania Democrats did not experience the sort of bounceback they were hoping for in 2025.

Back in January of this year the Democratic registration advantage statewide was 191,304, yet by the third week of December that edge stood at just 170,975. Despite that, October 2025 ended up being one of the party’s best months for gains in years. What’s more, those gains continued on through November 2025, which could constitute the beginnings of a turning point.

For comparison, in the wake of Trump’s 2016 upset, Democrats initially struggled to arrest the GOP’s voter registration momentum. Eventually, though, the tide began to turn in 2018 ahead of their midterm triumphs that fall. While Democrats had a solid month in October and made another net gain in November, we’ll have to see if it turns into a similar trend. That said, the Republicans’ overall registration gains throughout 2025 did not preview a strong election this past November. It is important to note, however, that there were just about 3.6 million votes cast in the statewide Supreme Court retention elections in 2025, only about half the total cast in the 2024 presidential election and about two-thirds of the total cast in the 2022 midterm gubernatorial election. So the electorate this year was smaller than what we’d expect next year or, especially, in 2028.

Overall, though, and judging by the recent statewide results, county results, and voter registration trends, we can see some indications that Pennsylvania’s pendulum is beginning to swing back once again.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.