Author’s Note: Other 2026 forecasts can be found in the Central File. This forecast/prediction contains proprietary mapping data beyond the paywall information prepared by the author for analytical purposes.
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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