With a week and a half to go before Election Day, Josh Shapiro is on the brink of the night of his dreams. It’s not clear if that will be enough for his party.
Polls now show the Pennsylvania governor favored to win by a landslide margin, a prospect that was far from assured even a few months ago. That victory also appears likelier than not to bring along a slew of downballot victories; polls and prognosticators now project Democrats to flip at least three congressional seats in the state. Most crucially, the party now appears poised to achieve unified control of the state’s government for the first time in more than three decades — a vital prerequisite for Shapiro’s likely presidential campaign.
It’s all enough for friends and foes of the governor to begin looking ahead to the presidential contest. And yet, in the background, one issue looms.
Knocking on victory
Shapiro’s all-but-assured re-election may be, by some measures, more impressive than his first victory in 2022. Four years ago, he defeated a far-right state senator, Doug Mastriano, who struggled to raise even a moderate amount of campaign cash. This year, he faces Stacy Garrity, the incumbent state treasurer and a far more polished politician. A two-time statewide winner, Garrity’s 2024 re-election actually saw her winning the most votes of any candidate in Pennsylvania history — including presidential nominees. Far better funded and more adept than Mastriano, she has nonetheless proved unable to get any real traction: eight consecutive public polls, conducted over the last three months, have found him ahead by at least 20 points.
A victory in line with the polling average — which currently stands at a 23-point lead — would be the largest for a Democrat in decades, eclipsing previous Democratic governors’ landslide wins in the blue wave years of 2006 and 2018. In and of itself, that margin would be significant, adding to Shapiro’s case that he can rack up a big victory in the country’s biggest swing state. More than that, though, it appears increasingly likely that the governor’s coattails will flip the state Senate, the last part of state government that Republicans control.
That would represent the fruition of more than a year of Shapiro’s efforts. “His attention and directness about the trifecta is really unprecedented,” said J.J. Abbott, who served as press secretary for former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. “Having a very popular governor come to your district, make content about you, talk about you to the press, is incredibly valuable in a down-ballot race,” Abbott added. “It’s maybe something that we can't really measure in the same way as money, but in the modern attention economy and in our politics now, maybe as valuable as TV ads.”
When it comes to measuring money, though, the governor is in an enviable position. In the most recently reported fundraising period, he out-raised Garrity by a roughly 8-to-1 margin. As of last month, he had nearly $20 million left to spend, compared to just under $2 million for the Republican. The combination of his popularity and fundraising prowess has put the party in pole position going into the final weeks, with at least three incumbent Republican congressmen now considered likely to fall. A fourth seat, currently held by Brian Fitzpatrick, who is known as the House GOP’s last genuine moderate and has comfortably survived in a Democratic-leaning district, is now also considered in play. Abbott called Fitzpatrick’s race “the most serious challenge he’s faced,” and pointed to Shapiro’s operation’s larger investment in the region, where several state legislative races are in play. A source working on one of the competitive congressional campaigns concurred, acknowledging, though with fitting reluctance for a down-ballot campaign, that the “top of the ticket” has proven key to their momentum.
The looming war
There are signs that Shapiro is already looking past November. Last week, he registered a federal PAC, his biggest foray yet into national politics after a cycle of assiduously avoiding out-of-state activity. Though ostensibly formed to support the aforementioned congressional campaigns, the PAC does represent a new step for Shapiro, who, as I’ve written before, stood alone in the 2028 Democratic field in issuing no primary endorsements outside his home state. According to an analysis out this week, Shapiro has also made the tenth most podcast appearances of anyone on the ballot this year.
He’s not alone in thinking of the next election. Having now watched dozens of debates this cycle, I’ve noticed an intriguing new trend at play: moderators asking more process-oriented and inside-baseball questions than ever before. Recent examples include pressing candidates on the DSA's platform and asking others to predict the electability of 2028 presidential contenders. It’s not hard to see where that’s coming from: as the barriers between pundits, flacks, journalists, and voters grow ever more porous, political debates have melded into one large, meta conversation.
Shapiro saw that firsthand in his race’s sole debate earlier this month, when moderators asked him to respond to polling showing Democratic voters souring on U.S. aid for Israel. The question made little sense practically; no governor has any power to directly impact the conflict. But no informed person watching was unaware of why it was asked: Shapiro, who remains staunchly pro-Israel, is increasingly out of step with a supermajority of Democratic voters on what is likely to become a central issue in the 2028 primary contest.
How that issue, and Shapiro’s stance on it, shakes out is a long way from being determined. But that doesn’t mean November’s results don’t matter.
A proving point
Since the dawn of the modern conception of “swing states,” neither party has run a presidential nominee hailing from a genuinely purple state. That’s more significant than it may appear. In the past three presidential cycles, Democratic voters have been asked to get behind nominees about whom they harbored major reservations, none of whom had a demonstrated record of winning in purple areas. Indeed, this was a crucial ingredient in the Democratic frustration that burst forth after 2024: the party had, three times in a row, run candidates with whom chunks of its voters were deeply dissatisfied. And in all three cases, the level of tradeoff on policy did not translate to a promised margin of victory.
In other words, Democrats, especially after 2024, felt they had received the worst of all worlds: sacrifice and compromise on policy, without a commensurate victory at the ballot box. If Shapiro does indeed have a successful night, he could be extending his party’s voters an offer they have not yet received in the modern era: a mainline, a centrist, a moderate, with actual evidence of victory. Whether they’ll want the trade is an open question. But after Election Day, they may actually have to make it.
Worthy reads
In Heatmap News, Matthew Zeitlin gives an overview of seven races with outsized impacts for climate policy.
The New Republic’s Jason Linkins chronicles the rise of a new, trash-talking posture from Democratic candidates.
In Governing Magazine, Ray Nothstein sees the 2026 elections as having the potential to usher in a “gubernatorial revival.”
The 19th’s Grace Panetta reports on a focus group of Trump-voting suburban women whose votes are now up in the air.
In Compact Magazine, Elliot Haspel argues liberals should recalibrate their thoughts on government regulation of “vices” like gambling and drug use.
Sean Trende has an excellent look at the limitations — and potential floodgates — for Democrats’ House ambitions.
And in Chaotic Era, Danielle Butterfield, the executive director of Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC, argues Democrats should not over-interpret a potential blue wave.
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