A Democrat won a surprise victory Tuesday in a special election for the Pennsylvania Senate, narrowly prevailing in a district that Donald Trump won by 15 points last fall.

The election, conducted in the small towns and suburbs of Lancaster County where no Democrat had won since the district was redrawn decades ago, joined two currents that are powering the political moment. It underscored the galvanizing fury among Democratic voters, who have flocked to rallies and crowded town hall meetings in the early weeks of Trump’s second term. And it was further evidence of the changes in the two parties’ electorates, with Democrats drawing more and more of the kind of highly educated voters who reliably turn out for special elections.

The victory does not affect control of the state Senate, where Republicans now hold a four-seat majority, though another special election, near Pittsburgh on Tuesday, gave the Democrats a one-seat majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The outcome of the House special election was not a surprise, but the margin of the Democratic victory there also exceeded Kamala Harris’ performance in the district in 2024.

Malone’s Unexpected Victory

The winner of the state Senate election, James Andrew Malone, 51, is a heavy-bearded, soft-spoken information technology consultant who has been mayor of East Petersburg Borough, a small town northwest of the city of Lancaster, for the past seven years.

He defeated Josh Parsons, chair of the Lancaster County Commission and an outspoken pro-Trump conservative. Parsons was strongly favored in the district, where Republicans hold a substantial registration advantage.

The seat opened up when the Republican lawmaker who had held it for a decade left office to work for Dave McCormick, a Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year.

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Shifting Political Landscape

A Democrat had not won the district since it was shifted to Lancaster from the city of Philadelphia in 1979. Still, concern on the right began bubbling up in recent days, especially after the first reported tallies of mail-in ballots showed a big lead for the Democrats. Scott Presler, a right-wing activist who barnstormed Pennsylvania for the Trump campaign last year, raised alarms about the state Senate race late last week, a warning that was emphasized on social media by Elon Musk.

As the outcome of the race was becoming clear Tuesday night, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a post on the social media platform X that voters in the district had “rejected a candidate who embraced the extremism and division coming out of D.C. In a district carried comfortably by Donald Trump just a few months ago, they chose a better way forward.”

As is often the case in elections held between the presidential and midterm elections, leaders of both parties are looking to a small handful of races for signs about voter engagement and enthusiasm. One of the first surprises this year came in January, when a Democratic candidate for the Iowa Senate won in a solidly conservative district.

Bigger tests lie ahead, with several coming next Tuesday. In Wisconsin, a closely divided swing state, tens of millions of dollars have poured into an election for a state Supreme Court seat, which will determine whether liberals retain a majority on the court. In Florida on the same day, two special congressional elections are scheduled. Both are in solid Republican territory, but the Democratic candidates have raised substantially more money than their Republican opponents.

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Changing Demographics in Lancaster County

The election in Lancaster County was a particularly clear-cut illustration of how the Democratic Party is assembling a well-educated, politically attuned base that is particularly inclined to turn out for special elections.

While the city of Lancaster became increasingly Democratic over the years, the rest of the county remained a Republican stronghold. Farmers and religious conservatives in Lancaster County were voting Republican long before Trump began winning over disgruntled Democrats in postindustrial areas elsewhere in the state. But as the city boomed, well-heeled retirees flooded into upscale suburbs and surrounding boroughs in the county. These new voters, plus younger professionals moving to the area for a lower cost of living, nudged one town after another toward the Democrats.

This is one of the reasons that Stella Sexton, one of Malone’s campaign managers, believed that with an aggressive ground game, Democrats had a chance.

“It was hard to get the ball rolling back in January,” she said. Democratic donors and potential canvassers were downcast and dispirited after the 2024 election. But, she said, “we didn’t have time for that.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Campbell Robertson

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