Rob Bresnahan (R-inc.) vs. Paige Cognetti (D)

I. The Race

Rob Bresnahan (Republican), having taken the seat from Democrat incumbent Matt Cartwright by 1.6% in 2024, seeks a second term. He is defending what is by far the most favorable of three decisive seats this year for Republicans.

Paige Cognetti (Democrat) is the mayor of Scranton and is running on the standard Democrat “healthcare” platform and promising to bring transparency and anti-corruption measures to Washington. She is attempting this despite a major surge for President Trump in northeastern Pennsylvania in the last election.

II. District Geography

Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District (PA-8) is wedged into the far northeastern corner of the Keystone State, and is right across the Delaware River from another decisive seat, NJ-7. It contains all of Wayne, Pike, and Lackawanna Counties, as well as a portion of Luzerne County and most of Monroe County. Four of those five counties were won by Trump in the 2024 election, and the district’s sharp rightward movement played a huge role in the recapture of Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes.

This is a huge working-class area that has shifted heavily toward the Republican Party in the age of Trump primarily over the issue of trade. Obama carried the dirt making up the present district by double digits in both of his runs, and even including a left lurch for “Scranton Joe” in 2020 due to the mail-in balloting fiasco, Trump carried it in all three of his runs – with his most impressive mark in 2024:

Presidential Margins

While the district is mostly made up of Trump’s bread-and-butter demographic, the white working class, over one-eighth of the population is Hispanic. Trump’s major gains with the Hispanic voter base helped propel Bresnahan to his 2024 victory over a tough Democrat incumbent.

Key Statistics

74.6% White, 13.2% Hispanic, 6.3% Black

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors have over-valued Cognetti, giving her a 73% shot at victory.

IV. History

In 2016, much of the turf represented in today’s PA-8 was part of the old PA-10, including a lot of the bedrock northern Pennsylvania red wall. Tom Marino (Republican) won the seat by over 40 points against his Democrat opponent.

In 2018, courts ordered an entirely new map in the Keystone State ahead of midterms. The northeastern corner became PA-8, and the boundaries of the elections held in 2018 and 2020 closely match those in use today, with only minor changes in Luzerne and Monroe Counties. Matt Cartwright, who had been in Congress since 2013 representing the old PA-17 (which included Scranton), moved over to the new race in the fresh PA-8, and took care of business in the 2018 House wave:

He was reelected in 2020, alongside a Trump +3 margin in the district, by 3.6%, and held on as the GOP flipped the House majority in 2022 by 2.4%, though holding the seat in either race have been highly unlikely without the changes imposed by Act 77 (2019), which allowed for no-excuse mail-in voting throughout the state.

Stuck in increasingly reddening turf and facing a Trump surge in the region, Cartwright finally lost the seat in 2024 to the man defending it this year (Bresnahan):

It is widely believed that Bresnahan would have won a much more comfortable margin had he not been squaring off against Cartwright.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Neither Bresnahan nor Cognetti faced a primary opponent, so there is no anticipation of party feuding or drama that will impact the November outcome.

VI. Polls

Poll listings pulled from The New York Times:

Two virtual ties in polls ordered by Democrat sponsors provide no visible edge for Cognetti.

VII. Media Ratings

Since summer, two of these reviewing bodies have downgraded the race from “Lean Republican” to toss-up. No one at this stage in the game is willing to take a leap of faith one way or another.

VIII. Party Registration

The figures above are imprecise and represent the voter registration figures of the five counties of PA-8 in full (not accounting for partial counties of Luzerne and Monroe); however, all five have become more Republican (Luzerne, Pike, and Wayne) or less Democrat (Lackawanna and Monroe) since Trump won the district big in 2024.

• Lackawanna from D+26,902 to D+24,722
• Luzerne from R+2,688 to R+4,746
• Monroe from D+7,606 to D+5,495
• Pike from R+8,710 to R+9,468
• Wayne from R+12,668 to R+13,011

Cognetti needs all she can squeeze out of Lackawanna and Monroe Counties, and neither are moving in her party’s direction. The continued Republican trend of this area is a huge boost for Bresnahan, even if these figures are more predictive of presidential trend than they are applicable to midterm analysis.

IX. Election Considerations

Read my book, The American War on Election Corruption, if you’d like to understand the major impacts to Pennsylvania’s elections caused by the introduction of mass mail-in voting. It’s not crackpot stuff; Pennsylvania’s elections are now more about ballot collection than they are about vote getting. The registration numbers shown above suggest Democrats, particularly with the area stagnant in population growth, should be incapable of gaining votes cycle after cycle, but they still manage to compete.

Pennsylvania has some of the worst elections in America. Read my 2024 election compendium, Pennsylvania – 2024 Election Compendium (December 21, 2024), to understand the stakes and why this is a potentially huge boost for Cognetti if the race is tight.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

I get people asking me all the time if I think Josh Shapiro can be beaten this year in the gubernatorial race. I don’t think there is a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. The risk of a massive landslide is that the three key Republican defenses in the state (PA-7, PA-8, and PA-10) get buried for lack of GOP intensity. PA-8, Bresnahan’s seat, is by far the most likely of those seats to be successfully defended. If he can hold the seat, Republicans have a very good shot of a photo finish for the House majority.

Bresnahan has considerable strength in a working-class district not commonly associated with GOP candidates. He has the standard conservative endorsements, such as that of the NRA and many law enforcement organizations, but his most vital endorsements are these:

• Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters
• American Federation of Government Employees
• Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen
• Many other labor unions too numerous to list

Understanding why those backers are important requires you to understand the electoral terrain:

Wayne and Pike Counties are traditional Pennsylvania GOP strongholds. Wayne hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since 1892, while Pike has only backed three in the past century (and none since 1964). Those have been red, and only got redder under Trump. The key to the Trumpian revolution in Pennsylvania ran through counties like Luzerne and Monroe. Luzerne aligned with the winner of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in every election from 1936 through 2016 (missed in 2020 because of the mail-induced quasi election), and Monroe is emerging as a new blue-collar bellwether along with Erie and Northampton Counties.

Lackawanna is where Cognetti is going to have to hit it big, and its Democrat strength has also waned. Obama beat Romney there by 27.2% in 2012, and Trump only missed the mark by 2.8% in 2024. If Bresnahan is going to ride the red counties to huge margins and have appeal to the Trumpy Monroe and Luzerne Counties, these blue collar endorsements will help him minimize the impact of Lackawanna for Cognetti (which she will win).

Here is where things stand today with regard to the key factors of the race:

Forecast for PA-8 House

While campaigning for Congress, Bresnahan railed against members trading stocks; he has since become one of the most prolific traders in all of Congress, and Cognetti has made that a key issue of her anti-corruption crusade – essentially accusing him of insider trading. Still, Bresnahan knows the path to victory in PA-8 relies on him sticking to the trade-based platform that has earned him his blue-collar endorsements, and I think this seat tilts his way ever so slightly in what is a must-win for the Republicans.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.