Pennsylvania Senate District 24: Pennycuick (R) v. Thomas (D)

Number	What it is	Source
Trump +2.2	2024 presidential margin of Donald Trump (R) in the district	Hesitation Media analysis of precinct returns
Republican +4.0	2022 margin of Pennycuick (R) over Jill Dennin (D)	Pennsylvania Department of State
Democrat +13.6	2022 margin of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) in the district	Hesitation Media analysis of precinct returns
About $9 million	Spent by the two campaigns, June 9 to Oct. 19	Spotlight PA

Sen. Tracy Pennycuick (R) won the 24th District in 2022 by 4 points while Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) carried it by nearly 14. Donald Trump (R) won it by 2.2 points in 2024, which makes it the closest of the four Republican Senate seats Democrats are trying to take, measured by the 2024 presidential vote.

Democrats hold 13 of the 25 Senate seats on the ballot and need 16 of them for a majority: all 13 of their own and three Republican seats such as this one.

The candidates

Pennycuick served in aviation in the Army and the Army Reserve, ran an aviation consulting business and directed Montgomery County’s veterans office, WHYY reported. She won the 147th House District in 2020 before moving to the Senate.

Chris Thomas (D) is a former Philadelphia middle school teacher and volunteer firefighter who was executive director of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, WHYY reported. Mike Schonewolf (Green) is also on the ballot.

The district

About four-fifths of the 2024 vote came from Montgomery County: Pottstown, Limerick, Towamencin, Upper Gwynedd, Skippack and the boroughs from Collegeville to Pennsburg. The rest came from Berks County, in and around Boyertown, Bally and Topton.

Money and issues

Spotlight PA reported Oct. 30 that the two campaigns spent about $9 million combined on television, digital ads and mail from June 9 to Oct. 19, part of it in-kind help from the parties’ Senate committees.

The report said data centers have been the main issue in the race and counted three proposals in the district, one of them, in Upper Hanover, since withdrawn.

It described a Republican ad that tied Thomas to developers through his past work for an engineering firm, and it reported that Pennycuick co-sponsored a bill favorable to data centers and later amended it and that Schonewolf wants data centers banned.

Spotlight PA also cited a September State Navigate poll that had Thomas ahead by 2 points, within its margin of error, and a Republican voter registration edge of about 6 points in the district.

What to watch

The district’s 2022 legislative result was 17.6 points to the right of its vote for governor the same day. To win, Thomas would need a margin more than 4 points better than that of Jill Dennin (D), Pennycuick’s 2022 opponent, and more than 2.2 points better than the Democratic presidential margin in 2024.

The count is on the Pennsylvania legislature results page, and the method and every source are under How we did this.

How we did this

Margins are Democrat minus Republican, in points.

The 2024 presidential, 2024 U.S. Senate, 2022 governor and 2022 U.S. Senate margins are Hesitation Media’s sums of MIT Election Data and Science Lab precinct returns, with each precinct assigned to the Senate district it voted in for the 2022 State Senate race.

Municipalities are from the Department of State’s descriptions of the 2022 district lines.

Passage	Figures	Source
Margins (chart, key numbers, body)	gov. D+13.59; U.S. Senate 2022 D+4.21; pres. R+2.24; U.S. Senate 2024 R+1.54; Montgomery 80% of the 2024 vote	MIT Election Data and Science Lab precinct returns, 2022 and 2024; Hesitation Media’s sums, swingdesk/pa_districts.py
2022 result	Pennycuick 62,893, Dennin 58,053	Pennsylvania Department of State, https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/
Senate math	13 of 25 held; 16 needed	Pennsylvania Department of State
Candidates’ backgrounds		WHYY voter guide, Sept. 4, 2026, https://whyy.org/articles/election-2026-pennsylvania-senate-24th-district-voter-guide/
Spending, data centers, ads, poll, registration, Schonewolf	about $9 million; three proposals; Thomas +2; about 6 points	Spotlight PA, Oct. 30, 2026, https://spotlightpa.org/news/2026/10/data-centers-pennsylvania-senate-race-pennycuick-thomas-24th/
Municipalities		Pennsylvania Department of State, 2022 Pennsylvania Senate Districts, https://www.pa.gov/agencies/vote/resources/redistricting/pennsylvania-redistricting-state-senate