6 Pennsylvania election takeaways: Shapiro’s ascendency, Fetterman’s plan, and Trump’s bad night

Josh Shapiro underscored his status as a potential national Democratic star.

John Fetterman proved that he could win back at least some of the voters who had fled his party.

In scoring two big wins for their party Tuesday night, both Democrats made points that reverberated nationwide. And results elsewhere affirmed that Pennsylvania will remain at the center of the political universe come 2024. (Read: The ads aren’t stopping.)

Here are takeaways from the election, and what we were still waiting for as of early Wednesday morning:

In winning by double digits in a swing state, Shapiro scored a victory that will turn heads nationwide.

Some critics — in both parties — note he had the easier task, facing a Republican opponent, State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who took far-right positions and barely raised enough money to advertise on TV.

But Shapiro, the state attorney general, still had to do the work to prevail, and few expect the methodical, ambitious Democrat from Montgomery County to stop at the governor’s mansion. His supporters are already projecting him as a future presidential candidate.

A closing note in his victory speech might double as a message to political watchers: “Tonight we showed how to build a coalition to win a race in a big way.”

With his tattoos, hoodies, and unpolished style, Fetterman looked like a different kind of Democrat. He said he could show political strength where other Democrats struggled. And he did.

Even though Fetterman’s main policy ideas largely match those of other Democratic senators, and even though he wasn’t able to campaign in rural counties as much as he had promised after his stroke in May, Fetterman vastly outperformed other Democrats in areas that gave the GOP huge margins in previous years.

Democrats who have seen Fetterman in action said that for years, as lieutenant governor and in the Democratic primary, he had built his standing in rural areas.

The result: In deep-red Westmoreland County, Fetterman was poised to win about 39% of the vote, compared with 35% for Joe Biden in 2020. In Lackawanna County, home to Scranton, Biden’s birthplace, Fetterman won about 57% of the vote, compared with Biden’s 54%. He racked up a nearly 14,000-vote margin there, up from Biden’s 9,657. In Erie, a bellwether swing county, Fetterman was winning about 53% of the vote, while Biden won a hair under 50%.

It helped that Fetterman had a seemingly perfect foil in Republican Mehmet Oz for white, working-class areas that had flocked to Donald Trump. Fetterman pilloried him as an out-of-touch rich guy — from New Jersey, no less.

Fetterman didn’t actually win back those red areas, but he didn’t have to: He cut Democratic losses and still compiled big wins in the big cities and suburbs.

In other words, he did what he said he would. His plan worked.

Despite the strong start for Democrats in Pennsylvania, some key races were still left on the table as of early Wednesday morning.

U.S. House contests in the Lehigh Valley, Scranton area, and Pittsburgh suburbs remained very close, with most votes counted. But while the races were too close to call as of early Wednesday, Democrats led in each — positioning them to potentially sweep every major federal race in Pennsylvania, and fully defy, in the Keystone State at least, predictions of a red wave.

With the margins in the U.S. House looking tight, those races could go a long way toward deciding which party holds the majority there, and by how much.

Tuesday’s blowout results in Florida might have been the death knell of the Sunshine State as a true swing state.

The upshot: Pennsylvania and its 19 Electoral College votes are now the most valuable battleground heading into 2024.

The state will be showered with attention by whoever the parties run for president. And if you just loved all the political ads that came your way the last few months, you’re in luck!

When Doug Mastriano won the GOP nomination for governor, both parties were filled with different kinds of dread.

Democrats feared that an election-denying Republican could gain control of Pennsylvania’s election oversight ahead of 2024.

“Truth and facts and logic and reason and basic decency are on the ballot,” former President Barack Obama said Saturday at a Philadelphia rally for Democrats. “Democracy itself is on the ballot.”

Republicans worried Mastriano would lose so badly he could hurt the entire ticket.

Democrats averted their concern. Republicans were left to rue Mastriano’s low-budget campaign that appealed mostly to far-right voters, without providing a boost from the top of the ticket. And the GOP faced potentially dire consequences, with Democrats in striking distance of flipping the state House for the first time in more than a decade.

Former President Donald Trump played a big role in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. During a contentious GOP primary he endorsed his fellow celebrity, Oz, helping him win a race decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

He then rallied twice for Oz to try to pull him ahead of Fetterman.

But Trump’s pick flopped in a race that Republicans were desperate to win to hold the Senate. And the gubernatorial candidate crafted in Trump’s image, Mastriano, did even worse.

With Trump seemingly poised to announce another presidential campaign any day, he had a bad night in a state that could decide the 2024 race.