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Your City Defined

PA’s 3rd District

Your City Defined

PA’s 3rd District

BY Lauren McCutcheon

With reporting by Jonathan Tannen

Feb. 17, 2026

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Pennsylvania has 17 U.S. Congressional Districts. Two of these districts reside wholly within the City and County of Philadelphia. The 3rd District, representing West Philadelphia, much of Center City and South Philadelphia, and some of North Philadelphia, is one of them.

According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, the 3rd District is the country’s most Democratic. In the 2024 presidential election, the 3rd’s results exceeded the national average among Democratic voters by 40 points.

As of the 2020 Census, the District was home to more than 765,000 residents with a population that is more than 55 percent African American, 32 percent White, 6 percent Asian and 5 percent Latino.

The area came to be called the 3rd District in 2018, when the PA Supreme Court ruled the then-voting map of PA unconstitutional. A changing electoral map is not uncommon for PA. Its boundaries and designations have been changing since the late 18th century.

Representing the 3rd District

Dwight Evans has represented the 3rd since 2016 or 2018, depending on your point of view. Evans represented the 2nd District from 2016 to 2018, when the 2nd was re-designated as the 3rd. In 2022, Evans won re-election with 95 percent of the vote. In 2025, the Representative announced he would retire the following year, inspiring a bevy of hopefuls angling for the post.

Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District. Map courtesy of Committee of Seventy.

MORE ON DISTRICTS, GERRYMANDERING AND VOTING

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PA's Newly Designated 3rd District
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Rowhouses on Buckingham Place, West Philadelphia. Photo by Christina Griffith

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