On Tuesday, residents had the opportunity to vote in the midterm election for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Currently, this seat is held by Republican Incumbent Ryan Mackenzie, but will be contested by Democrat Bob Brooks. Brooks won in the Democratic primary with about 42% of votes in May, while Mackenzie advanced from the Republican primary.
District PA-7 covers all of Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon Counties including as part of Monroe County. According to the 2020 census, PA-7 represents 788,445 residents.
These voters will play an important role in the upcoming election as PA-7 is historically a swing district, meaning it’s an area where voter preferences are nearly evenly split between the Democratic and Republican parties.
Since Lehigh Valley, the core of the district, encompasses a vast industrial and suburban landscape, the electorate of PA-7 has a history of sustaining close, highly competitive elections.
Brian Fife, professor and chair of the political science department, said this election is expected to be a tough race and it’s eminently winnable for either party.
“In a district like PA-7, a handful of votes, one way or another, matter a lot,” Fife said. “If the whole country had that sense of urgency that I think people have in this district, because of the knowledge that things are close, more people would participate. I look and I hope for a higher voter turnout in PA-7 and all across the country.”
Christopher Borick, professor of political science and director of the Lehigh University Opinion Observatory, said PA-7 is, in many ways, a microcosm of the state.
He said the district has an urban core with Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, as well as areas around the cities that are growing and have been for a while.
Other parts of Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon County especially are very rural, which adds to the varied array of voters that make up PA-7. This closely mirrors the composition of Pennsylvania, with booming cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh alongside large rural areas.
“If you look at the variety of communities in PA-7, and then you look at the balance of registered voters, and you look at the voting history, it has all the makings of a premier battleground district,” Borick said.
This district was redrawn in 2018 and again for the 2022 election cycle. In January 2018, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled the state’s congressional map was a product of unconstitutional gerrymandering. Before the aforementioned changes, PA-7 encompassed suburban areas of Philadelphia, while the Lehigh Valley and Allentown area were part of District 15.
The map went through another change when Pennsylvania lost a congressional seat following the 2020 census, resulting in adjustments to PA-7 that also affected parts of Monroe County.
While PA-7 has seen a number of changes in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, it cemented itself as a swing district. In 2024, Mackenzie beat Democrat Susan Wild by a margin of 1%, and in 2022, Wild beat Republican Lisa Scheller by a margin of 2%.
Wild, former congresswoman for PA-7 and now a professor in the College of Health at Lehigh, said the district is unique from other Pennsylvania districts because it’s the third-largest region in Pennsylvania, after the Philadelphia area and the Pittsburgh area, as well as the fastest-growing region in the state.
She said something that really impressed Wild while she was in Congress was that congress members really couldn’t pigeonhole voters in PA-7.
“I always kind of attributed it to the fact that our roots are in the working class here in PA-7…It’s mostly a district where people depend on their paycheck to get by,” Wild said. “We don’t have a lot of inherited wealth or billionaires, so people take things very seriously.”
Such a highly contested election also implies significant consequences for the area depending on the result.
For instance, Mackenzie’s campaign focuses on education improvement, workforce development and safe and secure communities.
Brooks, a local labor leader and president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, emphasizes higher wages, improved healthcare and workers’ benefits, according to the candidates’ respective campaign websites.
“One of the things that districts want is someone who can have good ties and good experience,” said Jennifer Jensen, professor of political science at Lehigh. “The candidate could do things like bring specific benefits home to the district. Very often that can be done by either party if the person has political power that they typically accumulate over time.”
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