HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Democrats feel confident they’ll prevail in next year’s gubernatorial race after recent election wins they believe show deep dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump.
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s most likely Republican opponent is state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a strong Trump supporter who has aligned herself with the president on various issues. She publicly backed his “big, beautiful” domestic policy law that extended tax breaks through health care and food assistance cuts, and his mass deportation plans.
Republicans aren’t buying into the narrative, saying their losses reflect a normal cycle for the party in power. One polling expert told Spotlight PA it’s too soon to predict how the political environment will change and if voters’ opinions will shift over the next year.
Democrats swept the Nov. 4 election, retaining three state Supreme Court justices by more than 20 points each, according to unofficial results. The party also made gains down the ballot: In Bucks County, voters elected the county’s first Democratic district attorney since the 19th century. In Erie County, a Democratic challenger unseated the incumbent county executive, winning by a margin of 25 points.
Democratic leaders say these results signal growing frustration with the Trump administration, citing examples such as frozen food assistance payments and ongoing tariff negotiations, which they say have driven up costs for Pennsylvania families.
Coupled with campaign messaging centered on economic concerns and keeping state courts free from billionaire influence, party officials and pundits say the strong showing bodes well for Democrats in next year’s governor’s race.
“We are focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, what's going on right now, and people are struggling in their daily lives,” state Democratic Party Chair Eugene DePasquale said.
He said voters see the governor, lieutenant governor, and Democrats in Pennsylvania “trying to address those in commonsense ways, and the Trump administration is just throwing more gas on the fire.
“If we get those two messages up, we're gonna have a very big 2026.”
State Republican Party Chair Greg Rothman, a state senator from Cumberland County, acknowledged the GOP “sustained losses,” saying in a written statement that the party needs to “do a better job of communicating our core principles of freedom, security, prosperity, and opportunity for all.”
James Markley, a spokesperson for the state GOP, elaborated that the party’s core principles include making groceries and gas more affordable and ensuring good-paying jobs. He added that “[the party] is going to take a long look at what we did well and what we can improve,” but said the overall results of the election had “much more to do with historical precedent.”
“After one party has a huge victory, a lot of times, the other party comes out and has a lot of steam behind them and gets their folks super engaged,” Markley said.
Indeed, the Republican Party scored major wins in Pennsylvania last year. Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.7 points, Dave McCormick ousted longtime incumbent U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, and Garrity won reelection with over 3.5 million votes, the most votes received by any statewide candidate.
Berwood Yost, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College, said the swing in favor of Democrats across the ballot this November indicates a general dissatisfaction with the direction the country is heading, though the data don’t show if that displeasure is aimed at Trump or at the broader Republican Party.
Yost cited economic issues and affordability as voters’ main concerns. Recent polling from the college also shows Trump’s approval rating falling with Pennsylvanians.
“The analogy to President Biden in 2024 is quite comparable, because President Biden was deeply unpopular,” Yost told Spotlight PA. “Most people thought the country was heading in the wrong direction, their personal financial situations were worse. Replace Biden with Trump, and all of those things are true right now.”
He added: “Now in 2026, the question is, will [Republicans] be able to regain some ground on those concerns?”
Sam Chen, a Lehigh Valley–based GOP strategist, called the 2025 election a “repudiation” of the current Republican Party, saying members will “have to sit down and take honest stock about what happened.”
Chen couldn’t pinpoint a single defining issue in this election, but argued Democrats’ success down the ballot indicates broad disapproval of the party in power. He cited potential factors such as the government shutdown and the subsequent freezing of food assistance, as well as federal law enforcement raids in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.
The strategist also agreed with Markley, noting that odd-year elections typically favor the party that’s not in power, and that this year’s results don’t predict the midterm election results.
“A lot of Republican voters that didn’t show up yesterday are going to show up in ‘26, and so some of this is going to get balanced out,” Chen told Spotlight PA.
Garrity, the state treasurer and likely GOP gubernatorial candidate, is a longtime Trump ally who has touted her support for the president since announcing her candidacy earlier this year. She spoke at a rally that sought to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election, a day before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and endorsed Trump for a second term.
He features prominently in a recent Garrity ad that begins, “You know the story — the radical left's diabolical plan to keep Trump from becoming president was based on finding tainted prosecutors to take Trump to court,” and includes Shapiro in that list.
Chen said Garrity would likely benefit from focusing on her own record and campaign rather than “on Trump or taking their cues from the White House.”
“If you're Garrity right now, you're looking at this, and you need to draw this away from a national narrative as much as you can,” Chen said. “If you’re Josh Shapiro’s campaign, if you’re the Democratic party, you really want to be careful not to rest on your laurels here.”
John Brabender, a media consultant for Garrity’s gubernatorial campaign, told Spotlight PA that the Nov. 4 election results won’t impact the campaign’s messaging. Garrity’s focus, he said, remains on affordability and growing the state’s economy.
“The most pro-Trump voters are pretty darn happy right now and aren't as motivated [to vote] because they're pretty happy with the progress they see,” Brabender said.
Brabender pushed back against the anti-Trump analysis, arguing that Democrats won this election by appealing to the “left wing” of their party on issues like reproductive health care and immigration.
The midterms, he said, will have a wider electorate. Brabender argued the Garrity campaign should reach out to “every pro-Trump voter from 2024” for next year’s race to harness the president’s name recognition.
Yost noted that it is difficult to predict future election results with past performance, but said according to these election results, Democrats will go into next year’s election with an advantage unless Trump’s approval rating improves and Republicans gain back trust in the economy.
Shapiro is heading into the 2026 election cycle as a popular incumbent. One recent poll showed the governor with a 60% approval rating.
When he first ran for the role in 2022, then-Attorney General Shapiro cast himself as Pennsylvania’s defender against the Trump administration’s attempts to overturn election results. He’s continued to sue the administration, filing over a dozen lawsuits in the past year to free federal funding.
In an interview the day after the election, Shapiro said the results sent a “clear message to Donald Trump that folks are tired of the chaos,” and that voters want “people who are focused on meeting their needs.”
“The candidates spoke about the issues that mattered in their communities. They had plans to lower costs. They had plans to address unique needs in that community, in that state,” Shapiro said.
Asked about how those messages would shape the governor’s race, Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for the Shapiro campaign, did not answer directly, instead saying they “will have more to say as we go forward.” But, he added, the governor has prioritized lowering costs, increasing jobs, and funding public education and public safety throughout his time in office.
“I think you've seen for years, frankly, a governor who's focused every day on getting stuff done for people,” Bonder said. “That's … what he's going to continue to make clear when it comes to the stakes of who we elect as our leaders here in the commonwealth.”