With every seat in the House up for re-election in 2026, we’re working to defend the one-seat majority we first helped build in 2022. The path to protecting this critical majority will be challenging — in 2022, the deciding race came down to just 63 votes! — but we know what it will take to achieve our goal, because we’ve done it twice now.
In 2024, a year when every statewide election in Pennsylvania went to the rightwing and maintaining this majority should have been impossible, we successfully defended every seat, including in some districts that went overwhelmingly for Trump. In fact, the results we drove in this chamber defied historical trends.
Typically, state legislative candidates underperform the top-of-the-ticket by about 5%. But in 2024, in three Pennsylvania districts, state legislative candidates overperformed Vice President Harris by double digits — including a district TSP helped hold by 2.6 percent that Trump won by more than 30 percent. About 3,000 voters across these three key seats made the difference in defending the majority.
Even with a rightwing majority in the State Senate, lawmakers in the one-seat Pennsylvania House majority have delivered for their constituents by creating bipartisan momentum around policies that improve lives. During the 2025 legislative session, the House majority prioritized working-class Pennsylvanians by passing policies to raise the minimum wage in the state for the first time in over a decade — making it easier for Pennsylvanians to put food on the table. The House majority has also passed policies to keep mortgage interest rates down, along with an earned income tax credit that would put up to $2,000 back in nearly one million Pennsylvanians’ pockets.
Lawmakers in this majority are using their governing power to show Pennsylvanians what it looks like when lawmakers prioritize their constituents’ needs. But a single seat in the House is the difference between improving lives and rightwing extremism. If we don’t defend the House majority in 2026, lawmakers will not be able to continue this work.
We see a path to protect this critical majority once again in 2026. But with stakes this high and margins this close, we know we can’t afford to take a single seat for granted in 2026. That’s why the work must start right now.
We invested over three times more than the next largest national coordinated funder to successfully defend every incumbent district and preserve the House majority and hold ground in the Senate. About 500 votes decided the closest race in the House chamber — reflecting the crucial work done to shore up these incumbent races in a tough national environment.
In 2022, The States Project bet big in Pennsylvania — investing 80 times more than the next largest contributor to caucuses and candidates in the Pennsylvania House. After every ballot was counted, we helped gain 12 new seats for a new majority in the Pennsylvania House for the first time since 2010.
In The States Project’s first cycle in Pennsylvania, we helped hold ground in both chambers. Our work helped gain a new House district, which had been held by Republicans ever since it was created in 1969. We also helped to gain a new seat in the Senate.
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State lawmakers have the power to enact policies that can protect millions of Americans, and the overall direction of the country, from the worst impacts of a second Trump presidency.
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