High turnout, aggressive campaign strategies and dissatisfaction with the Trump administration fueled Democratic wins across the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania and nation Tuesday, giving the party new momentum heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

Locally, Democrats secured victories in both county executive races, and picked up seats on township councils and school boards across the Lehigh Valley.

What can these results tell us about where Lehigh Valley voters stand politically ahead of the midterms, which could reshape the House of Representatives and see a new governor elected to lead the commonwealth?

Dissatisfaction with the White House

Voters in the Lehigh Valley are feeling the effects of national policies, including funding cuts and a disruption in SNAP food stamp benefits amid the federal shutdown, as well as broad disapproval of Donald Trump’s performance on key issues like the economy. According to an NBC News poll, only 30 percent of voters believe Trump has lived up to their expectations to bring down inflation and the cost of living.

While most of the races on the ballot in Tuesday’s off-year election were local, national politics was on the minds of voters, candidates and strategists this year, in a phenomenon known as the “nationalization of local politics.”

“If you put the local elections in the context of the elections in Virginia and New Jersey and New York City, what has happened elsewhere, it fits into the larger pattern of voters really rejecting the Trump policies,” said John Kincaid, professor of American politics at Lafayette College. “So I think they do represent a lot of dissatisfaction with his policies, and particularly, the emphasis on affordability in elections indicates that Trump has developed his own inflation problem, just like Biden. [Trump] is not addressing that issue.”

Barrett Hook, who voted at the East Allentown Youth Center early Tuesday evening, said that he was “at a point where, unless things take a big turnaround, it will all be blue,” indicating his support for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

He said is concerned about democracy under Trump, and is unnerved by his belief that Trump could try to interfere in the 2026 midterm elections because of the president’s previous unproven claims of election fraud.

Local Democratic candidates, including re-elected incumbent Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk and newly elected Lehigh County executive Josh Siegel, have vowed to resist Trump’s policies on a local level.

Mark Morawski, who voted at the Leithsville Fire Station in Lower Saucon Township on Tuesday evening, said that although he is a Republican, he disagrees with a lot of Trump’s choices.

“He hasn’t been very much America first, in my opinion,” Morawski said. “How many billions [of dollars] did we sent to Argentina? How many billions have we continued to send to the Ukraine? He wasn’t [elected] to ship money overseas.”

Lower Saucon Township voters elected two new members to council, both Democrats, giving the township an all-Democrat board after years of political infighting between members of both parties.

Allentown residents Jose Martinez and Madeline Torres-Borges said after voting that they chose to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot because they, too, disapprove of Trump’s leadership, specifically criticizing the interruption in SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown, which has threatened millions of Americans’ access to food.

“I hurt for them,” Torres-Borges said. “I hurt for the single mothers. I hurt for the homeless, for the elderly, for the kids.”

Democratic momentum

Certainly, Democrats feel optimistic about their future prospects after Tuesday. Democrats will aim to regain control of the House from Republicans, who currently hold a slim, four-seat majority in the chamber.

“Last night, American voters delivered a blue sweep and make no mistake, the Democratic Party is back. The Democratic Party is a party of affordability and the Democratic Party is full steam ahead to take back Congress next year,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, on a press call Wednesday afternoon.

One of the top targeted seats to flip the House will be here in the Lehigh Valley, where first-term GOP Congressman Ryan Mackenzie, who narrowly ousted Democrat Susan Wild last year, will face a challenge from one of five candidates seeking the Democratic nomination.

In a statement, Mackenzie campaign spokesperson Arnaud Armstrong said: “When the broader electorate tunes in ahead of 2026, voters will not ask who’s done the best job obstructing, they will ask who’s been fighting for them. From the very beginning of his time in office, Congressman Mackenzie has prioritized cost of living issues for working families, seniors, and everyone in our community. He has been an independent voice in a broken Washington, D.C., who has always and will always stand up for the Lehigh Valley.”

More than just the victories themselves, Democrats on the press call lauded the margin of Democratic victories in Pennsylvania and nationwide. Despite millions of dollars poured into a campaign pushing voters to choose “no” on retaining three Democratic Supreme Court justices, all three captured around 61% of the vote, securing their positions for another 10 years and holding the court’s Democratic majority.

Locally, Democrats also swept county executive races by wide double digit margins — Siegel captured 60% of the vote over Republican Roger MacLean, and Tara Zrinski, who was elected to lead Northampton, took 59.4% over Republican Tom Giovanni, a County Council member.

Democrats even unexpectedly swept the Lower Macungie Township commissioners race, and two Democrats ousted two Republicans in the race for South Whitehall Township commissioner. Democrats also flipped the majority on the Southern Lehigh School Board.

Turnout was particularly strong for an off-year election, too — around 38% of registered voters in Lehigh County and 40% in Northampton County cast a ballot, compared to around 31% during a typical off-year election.

“We turned out voters like never before in Lehigh County,” Siegel said in a victory speech Tuesday night. “There was a blue tsunami.”

Siegel, reached by phone Wednesday morning, said his approach to campaigning was “the gold standard” for a municipal race. In what would normally be a sleepy election fueled by volunteers here and there, Siegel hired a full-time field organizer and several canvassers, who took no prospective votes for granted, he said. He and his campaign staff made more than 70,000 “voter contacts” via text, phone and in person.

It was that aggressive approach that Siegel believes led to a decisive victory, and should be seen as a “blueprint” to approach future Democratic campaigns, he said. Beyond just aggressively trying to reach voters, Siegel said that his campaign offered a positive vision for the county’s future, both by standing up to Trump’s policies and offering a clear alternative to voters who are dissatisfied with the current political system.

“We knew we had our work cut out for us, nothing was certain or locked in. I think those swings we saw were results of hard-core campaigning, going out and talking about how we are a different type of Democrat,” Siegel said. “We ran against a political system, ran against dysfunction of politics, and we talked about people’s frustrations, not just with the Republican party, but we talked to Democrats about frustration with the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party needs to do better. We need to do a better job at fighting back, speaking out and standing for something again, fighting for a real vision for families.”

Republicans regrouping

With such a resounding victory for Democrats locally, Republicans are wondering how to win back voters in 2026.

Bob Smith, a Republican candidate for Allentown School Board who lost his bid despite an endorsement from the teacher’s union, said that the federal government shutdown and state government impasse could have hurt Republicans at the polls. House Republicans should try to negotiate with Democrats to end the shutdown, reopen the government and keep funding vital programs like SNAP to get back on voters’ good side by 2026, he believes.

“When you stop communicating and you stop talking, it only hurts people. I think they should be talking,” Smith said. “I’m not saying you give in either to every demand, but you don’t stop talking.”

A Republican operative, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about his opinions on the candidates, said that Democrats, seeing an opportunity to exploit dissatisfaction with Trump, campaigned much more aggressively than Republicans this year.

“Democrats were showing up like Trump was on the ballot, Republicans showed up like a county executive race and some judicial retention votes were on the ballot,” he said.

Republicans running for office in 2026, like Mackenzie and state treasurer and GOP governor hopeful Stacy Garrity, will have better organized and funded campaigns, helping get their message out to voters before November 2026, he said.

“I don’t know what the message of Republicans in Lehigh County were going into this election,” the operative said. “Organizationally, 2026 is going to look nothing like 2025. The Republican ticket is shaping up to be strong, and there will be resources, there will be people who know how to run campaigns, there will be national money coming in in a way that we did not have in 2025. And that is going to make a difference.”

Reporter Anthony Salamone contributed to this report.

Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.