PA-8 · House

The district, in brief

Pennsylvania's 8th district is based in Northeast Pennsylvania, the Wyoming Valley and Pocono Mountains, including all of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike counties and most of Luzerne and Monroe counties. The lines are the map first used in 2022 and are not redrawn for this cycle.

The incumbent is Republican Rob Bresnahan, who flipped the district in 2024 with 50.8% of the vote; the facts list Democrat Matt Cartwright as the winner from 2018 through 2022. The Democratic nominee is Paige Cognetti, mayor of Scranton since 2020. Both were unopposed in their primaries: Bresnahan took 38,075 votes and Cognetti 58,726. Cartwright declined to run and endorsed Cognetti; state senator Marty Flynn, Lackawanna County commissioner Bill Gaughan and Pittston mayor Michael Lombardo also declined. As of June 30, 2026 Bresnahan had raised $5,234,586 with $2,608,048 on hand, and Cognetti $4,609,589 with $3,406,710 on hand.

Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (April 7, 2026), Inside Elections (June 12, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 30, 2026) each call the seat a Tossup; Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026) calls it Flip. Three district polls are recorded, all from Democratic firms: Lake Research Partners (June 18–23, 2026) had Cognetti 47%, Bresnahan 45%; Impact Research, sponsored by Cognetti's campaign (June 8–11, 2026), had Cognetti 46%, Bresnahan 45%; Public Policy Polling (August 27–28, 2025) had Cognetti 45%, Bresnahan 43%. A debate hosted by WVIA-TV is scheduled for October 29, 2026.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The model's basis says no district polls, but the text records three general-election polls (all from Democratic-aligned pollsters); none from a Republican or nonpartisan firm is listed.; The text does not state the district's presidential results; the facts give a 2024 two-party baseline only.; The debate table in the text is headed as the 9th district's debate, though it lists Bresnahan and Cognetti; the heading appears to be a page error.; No independent or third-party candidates are mentioned.; The endorsement sections are empty.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 716a870fb99d; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Robert P. Bresnahan, Jr. (Republican), in this chamber since 2025, 1 term. Committees: House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on Small Business.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 0.2 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 546,551 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 48.5% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 49.3% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 1.6 points toward Democrats. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $727,269 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, the Census Bureau's own tabulation of this district (118th Congress lines). Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from -14.7 to +13.0 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: total outside/party money: 5.6 pts toward the Democrat; outside money balance: 2.3 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 presidential lean (R+7.2): 1.2 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-3 levels, D minus R): 1.1 pts toward the Republican; asian share (2.0%): 1.0 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 8.45 points, made of the seat's own volatility 89%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 00a09d4b-7980-4ec5-ada0-077968a87242, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).