The Election Briefing — Sunday, October 25, 2026

01 / The big story · Pennsylvania House elections

The Pennsylvania map has opened up—four Republican seats, four close races

A new Times/Inquirer/Siena survey puts Democrats narrowly ahead or tied in every district it measured. More revealing than one generic ballot number is the geography of the pressure.

Siena Research Institute · New York Times · Philadelphia Inquirer · Sunday, October 25, 2026

In a single set of district polls, four Republican-held Pennsylvania House seats are close. Bob Harvie registers 48 percent against Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s 46 percent in PA-01. Democrat Bob Brooks is at 49 percent against Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s 44 percent in PA-07. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti is at 51 percent against Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s 46 percent in PA-08. In PA-10, former broadcaster Janelle Stelson and Rep. Scott Perry are tied at 48 percent.

The contrast among these districts is the story. Fitzpatrick has historically won crossover voters in a Democratic-leaning suburban seat; Perry has represented a more Republican-leaning area around Harrisburg; the Lehigh Valley and Scranton-area districts illustrate how quickly a national environment can interact with local incumbency.

These are four separate polls, not a prediction of four Democratic wins. Siena surveyed roughly 400 likely voters per district October 16–22. A two-point lead in one survey and a five-point lead in another are not precise estimates of Election Day margins. A central editorial question is why these districts look competitive simultaneously—not to label narrow poll differences as settled outcomes.

Original reporting ↗How spending is shifting into red districts ↗

02 / Race spotlight · Pennsylvania’s 1st District

Brian Fitzpatrick’s carefully cultivated independence faces a district-level test

Bucks County has supported Democratic presidential candidates while repeatedly reelecting a Republican congressman. The new survey suggests that distinction is worth watching closely.

Fitzpatrick enters this election with a history of surviving unfavorable national conditions. The former FBI agent is a five-term Republican in a suburban Philadelphia district; he won his 2024 race by nearly 13 percentage points even as the district voted for Kamala Harris for president. His political identity emphasizes local services, unions and bipartisan positioning rather than national ideological battles.

His Democratic challenger, Bob Harvie, is a Bucks County commissioner. Harvie is trying to turn national dissatisfaction with the Republican administration into a district-level referendum. Fitzpatrick’s task is to persuade voters that they can separate their judgment of their congressman from their judgment of his party.

The 48–46 Harvie-Fitzpatrick finding is important not because the two-point margin identifies a leader—it does not—but because a seat Fitzpatrick won comfortably two years ago is being polled as a genuine contest. The candidates’ organizational strength, advertising and the presidential-vote crossover will matter beyond this single sample.

What to watch: whether independent and Democratic-leaning voters continue to distinguish Fitzpatrick from the national GOP, and how both parties spend late in a district the congressman previously made look safe.

Original reporting ↗The new outside-spending landscape ↗

03 / Campaign money · The widening map

Trump-aligned money is now going into districts he won comfortably

Greg Giroux’s Bloomberg Government reporting tracks a revealing form of Republican defensive spending: new television reservations in districts once thought secure.

On October 22, No Going Back PAC bought television advertising across several districts where Trump won by double digits in 2024, according to AdImpact data cited by Bloomberg Government. The organization had received at least $200 million from MAGA Inc. The new purchases include districts represented by Eli Crane in Arizona, Brad Finstad in Minnesota and Anna Paulina Luna in Florida.

The fact of an ad purchase is not proof a district is tied or even closely contested. Some advertising is preventive, some forces the other side to spend, and some accompanies party infrastructure. But the locations reveal how the GOP’s allied groups are allocating resources beyond the conventional handful of toss-ups.

Bloomberg also described activity by another Trump-aligned organization, Safety and Affordability PAC, in New York’s 21st District. The most useful follow-up is to monitor actual airings, not mistake a reservation for money already spent.

Original reporting ↗

04 / The craft of polling · Independent investigation

Independent analysis · Polling transparency

Where have all the Senate polls gone?

A remarkably practical question: why is less public polling available in October than in previous midterms? Mary Radcliffe and Cooper Burton of FiftyPlusOne examined historical survey counts and found that, using a consistent cutoff, there were 66 October Senate surveys released in the current cycle, compared with an average of 123 at the comparable point in the preceding four midterms.

The same investigation found October polling so far in just 19 of 35 Senate races, leaving many states without fresh public numbers. Sparse public polling is not evidence that campaigns have no private data, nor does it by itself tell us the direction of a polling miss. It changes what outside observers can know—and how confidently they ought to describe a race.

The authors disclose an important limitation: polls conducted in the measured window but not yet released could raise the count later. That transparency is exactly why a self-published original investigation belongs in the newsletter.

Read the full feature ↗Related: their poll-data verification investigation ↗

05 / Election administration · A court decision

Utah · Federal authority

A Trump-appointed judge rejects a DOJ demand for Utah’s private voter roll

In a ruling issued Friday, October 23, U.S. District Judge David Barlow dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking unredacted Utah voter-registration data. He ruled that the records at issue were not within the Civil Rights Act’s particular disclosure provision as DOJ had argued. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, defended the state’s refusal to hand over sensitive information.

The ruling is one in a broader national series of cases over how far federal authority to inspect election records extends. The issue is legal access to voter information, not a judicial finding that every registration on a state’s rolls is valid or invalid.

Read original reporting ↗University of Wisconsin’s case-by-case tracker ↗

06 / On the world ballot · Sunday watch

Serbia · October 25

A student-led movement faces Vučić at the ballot box

After nearly two years of protests following the 2024 Novi Sad railway-station canopy collapse that killed 16 people, a student-backed political movement challenged the governing party in snap parliamentary elections today. At this issue’s noon-Eastern cutoff, the result was not yet known. The central question was whether street-level mobilization could translate into parliamentary power.

The eventual result belongs in October 26’s edition, not retrospectively in this one.

Read original reporting ↗Official election announcement ↗

Brazil · Presidential runoff

A second-round test for Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro

Brazilians also voted Sunday in a presidential runoff after neither candidate won a majority in the first round. The second round pitted incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son.

The vote is being watched well beyond Brazil for its implications for relations between Brasília and Washington. Results had not been declared at the noon-Eastern edition cutoff; the outcome appears in the next issue.

Read original reporting ↗