Published November 03. 2026 11:04PM
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti unseated first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr. on Tuesday, flipping Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District to the Democrats.
The Associated Press called the race at 10:41 p.m. Cognetti led with 146,356 votes, or 55.16%, to Bresnahan’s 118,958 votes, or 44.84%, with 94% of the vote counted. Her margin was 27,398 votes.
Decision Desk HQ had projected the result at 9 p.m. NBC News followed at 9:43 p.m.
The district covers all of Lackawanna, Pike and Wayne counties and parts of Luzerne and Monroe. Bresnahan took the seat in 2024, ousting six-term Democrat Matt Cartwright by about 1.5 points.
Cognetti won City Hall in a 2019 special election, running as an independent after Mayor Bill Courtright pleaded guilty to corruption charges. She was Scranton’s first woman mayor. She was reelected as a Democrat in 2021 and again in 2025.
Cognetti grew up in Oregon and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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