Pennsylvania’s two biggest Democrat names just got some numbers they did not want to see.
A fresh Quinnipiac University poll put the Keystone State’s governor and its junior senator under the microscope, and neither came out looking entirely comfortable.
But for John Fetterman, the results go well beyond uncomfortable — they tell a story his party is not going to forget by 2028.
The Numbers Pennsylvania Democrats Are Trying to Ignore
The poll surveyed 895 registered voters from July 9 to July 13 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
The new poll showed Governor Josh Shapiro leading Republican candidate Stacy Garrity by 13 points, with 53 percent of Pennsylvanians planning to vote for Shapiro while 40 percent planned to cast their ballots for Garrity.
The survey suggests the race has grown closer since February, when the pollster found Shapiro’s support at 55 percent and Garrity’s at 37 percent. It is the weakest public poll for Shapiro of the election cycle, while Garrity has seen her support increase among Republican voters from 82 percent to 87 percent.
Shapiro’s approval rating stood at 56 percent in both the July and February surveys, but the share of voters who disapprove of him rose from 29 percent to 34 percent in the new survey.
A 13-point lead sounds safe. It is not exactly a mandate either, especially in a state Donald Trump carried in 2024.
In 2024, Pennsylvania chose President Donald Trump by nearly 2 percentage points, a shift from 2020, when it backed former President Joe Biden by just over a single point.
Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy pointed to a specific drag on Shapiro: “There is a big groundswell of negativity from Pennsylvania voters over AI data center saturation.” He added, “Many Pennsylvania voters are looking at their finances, flashing back to July of last year and seeing slippage.”
The poll results suggest Shapiro may be benefiting from voters being less familiar with Garrity, who serves as Pennsylvania treasurer. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they had not heard enough about her to form an opinion, compared to only 14 percent for Shapiro.
But Garrity is not standing still. Her name recognition will only grow as the fall campaign heats up, and the gap between 13 points and a toss-up can close faster than anyone expects in a state this evenly divided.
Shapiro remains favored to win reelection, with other polls giving him an even larger lead. Forecasters give Shapiro an advantage, with his race rated Likely Democratic by Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Solid Democratic by Cook Political Report.
Fetterman’s Democrat Support Has Essentially Collapsed
The Shapiro numbers are worth watching. The Fetterman numbers are something else entirely.
The poll signals Fetterman could be substantially vulnerable, as only 19 percent of Democrats approve of his job performance while 69 percent disapprove. Overall, he does remain above water with 48 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval.
He is bolstered by a strong standing among Republicans — 77 percent of whom approve of the Democratic senator and only 12 percent disapprove. Among independents, his approval stood at 44 percent and disapproval at 48 percent.
So the man is popular with Republicans, treading water with independents, and getting buried by his own party. That is a strange place to be for a senator who ran as a progressive in 2022 and swept all 67 Pennsylvania counties in the Democrat primary.
More than half of those surveyed — 52 percent — would like to see Fetterman leave the Democrat Party, while 31 percent would prefer that he stay.
Fetterman’s staunch support for Israel, willingness to vote for several Trump nominees, and his fierce criticism of the Democrat Party’s progressive wing have drawn calls for him to face a challenge.
And don’t let anyone sell you on the idea that Fetterman is some kind of principled moderate worth praising. The man is playing a very specific game. He is up for reelection in 2028 in a state that is trending red, and he knows full well that running as a reliable left-wing vote would be a losing ticket. His record tells the real story: Fetterman supports abortion-on-demand, backs gun control, has supported amnesty for illegal aliens, and has gone on record supporting transgender surgeries for children. The hoodie and the tough-guy act are a costume. The voting record is what matters.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Fetterman wrote, “I’d be a terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.”
The first-term senator noted that, despite bucking his party on some high-profile issues recently, he still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats and sides with them on issues of abortion, labor, marijuana and labor rights.
That is the part the media conveniently buries whenever they run a story about Fetterman the brave maverick.
The 2028 Primary Pressure Is Already Building
Progressives are already plotting a primary challenge to Senator John Fetterman when he is up for reelection in 2028.
The Working Families Party launched a new website, PrimaryFetterman.com, that will serve as a hub for its effort to unseat the senator. It features pages dedicated to opposition research on him, volunteer recruitment and even a link to request donation refunds from his campaign.
Several Pennsylvania Democrats are weighing a primary challenge to Fetterman when his term expires in 2028. They include US Representatives Brendan Boyle and Chris Deluzio, as well as former Representatives Susan Wild and Conor Lamb, the latter of whom lost the 2022 Democrat Senate primary to Fetterman.
“I don’t think it’s a possibility he will face a primary challenge — it’s a certainty,” said Democrat consultant T.J. Rooney.
And what exactly are Fetterman’s own former allies saying about him? It is not subtle.
Former Representative Susan Wild called him “such a disappointment” on X and added, “People worked so hard for Fetterman and he kicked them in the teeth.” Representative Brendan Boyle responded with even less subtlety: “Once again Sen Fetterman shows why he is Trump’s favorite Democrat. He needs to go.”
One former Fetterman staffer told NOTUS, “I don’t think he’s running. He didn’t like the job, he missed home, and now is a pariah within the party.”
Pariah within his own party, propped up by Republican approval ratings. That is the Fetterman situation in a single sentence.
In addition to Trump’s 2024 victory, then-Democrat Senator Bob Casey lost reelection to Republican Dave McCormick in one of the closest races of the year. Pennsylvania is not the blue-leaning state it was a decade ago, and the Democrat bench there knows it.
A warning sign for the party: nearly half of respondents — 49 percent — said that the Democrat Party had moved too far left, including 1 in 7 Democrat respondents.
That number matters. When your own voters think the party has lurched too far left, and the only senator from your state who polls above water owes his numbers to Republicans, you have a structural problem that no amount of messaging can paper over. Fetterman is the symptom. The party’s hard-left lurch is the disease.
Pennsylvania Republicans, meanwhile, have a clear path. Stacy Garrity needs to close the name recognition gap and make the case to voters who already have doubts about Shapiro’s handling of the economy and data centers. The state voted for Trump twice. The voters are there. The question is whether the GOP can get the right candidate in front of them at the right moment.
The Keystone State is not locked up for anyone. These poll numbers just confirmed it.
Sources: Newsweek, PoliticsPA, The Hill, Spotlight PA, NOTUS, NBC News, Quinnipiac University Poll, ABC27