There is one more special election to pay attention to before the midterms in 95 days. On March 24th, 2026, the state representative for Pennsylvania’s 12th House district, Stephanie Scialabba, announced that she would be resigning effective March 31st. This development has kicked off a special election on August 18th between Democrat Brandon Dukes and Republican Scott Timko. On paper, this is a reliably red district located within Butler County, Pennsylvania. Donald Trump won this district by around 18% in 2024. But could this special election be surprisingly competitive? Given the trends in the district and Pennsylvania Democrats’ abilities to massively overperform in special elections, I believe so.

District Breakdown:

The 12th State House District of Pennsylvania is located in the southwestern portion of Butler County, where nothing notable has ever happened. It belongs to the Greater Pittsburgh region of Pennsylvania and includes the following areas, which Pittsburgh residents may know but are otherwise obscure. The district’s population growth is largely driven by Cranberry Township and, to a lesser extent, Adams Township. Additionally, Butler County is one the few counties in Western Pennsylvania to have an increase in population between 2020 and 2025 (3.3%), attracting residents of the Pittsburgh area for suburban expansion.

Partisan History

The 12th State House District of Pennsylvania has favored the Republican Party for a long time. In Barack Obama’s 2008 win, where he carried Pennsylvania by 10 points statewide, Senator John McCain carried this district by 31 points. When Obama was reduced to a 5-point margin of victory in 2012, Governor Romney carried this district with a 37-point margin of victory. However, in 2016, things started to change. When Trump carried Pennsylvania by 0.72%, he was only able to carry the 12th district by 28 points, a much worse performance than Romney despite doing better than him statewide.

This trend continued in 2018, where Governor Tom Wolf lost the district by just around 8 points in his 17-point victory statewide. During the 2020s, this district has continued to swing leftwards, with Joe Biden losing this district by about 20 percentage points. In 2022, Attorney General Josh Shapiro narrowly carried the district by 0.4%. He outran his predecessor Tom Wolf by 8 points despite doing 2 points worse than him statewide. This trend even continued in 2024 when Donald Trump won the district by 18%, his weakest showing in this district in all three of his runs for president. Cranberry Township (the part of Butler County that is driving this shift to the left) has shifted from Trump winning it by 23.4% in 2016 to just 12% in 2024.

In summary, the district went:

2008: McCain +31
2012: Romney +37
2016: Trump +28
2018: Wagner +8
2020: Trump +20
2022: Shapiro +0.4
2024: Trump +18

Somewhat useless without the statewide margins above, but the district is clearly moving leftward.

Special Election Performances by Pennsylvania Democrats

Special elections have not gone well for the Pennsylvania GOP since Trump got elected (arguably since he got elected for the first time in 2016, but I digress). In March 2025, we saw James Malone defeat Josh Parsons in an upset for a Trump +15 state senate district. Much like HD-12, it was a left-trending district that was swinging to the left presidentially. The GOP has not fared particularly well in any other special elections since, according to The Downballot’s special election board (shoutout to them, they do great work), Pennsylvania Democrats have been outrunning Kamala Harris’s 2024 margins by an average of twenty points.

That sort of swing in this district would immediately flip the district. Josh Shapiro’s coattails and a blue wave in November would help keep this district in Democratic hands.

Who are the candidates? Well, these are small-scale races, so there’s not much to go on. Dukes is a local construction loan administrator, and Scott Timko is a commercial pilot. This is likelier to be a test of party organization rather than candidate quality.

Conclusion

Regardless of the outcome of the race for HD-12, the margins are likely to be narrow. But it will be a big test of Democratic strength ahead of the midterms. Back in 2018, one of the biggest indicators of a blue wave was the special election between Conor Lamb and Rick Saccone, where Lamb defeated Saccone in a district that had gone for Trump by 20 points in 2016. It was a sign of things to come, as Democrats in Pennsylvania were immensely successful that November with big wins statewide. This will be one of the last special elections of the year, and hopefully it will give us a good idea of what the midterms will look like in Pennsylvania and beyond.