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Voter Registration Update – Final Version

voteThe Dems had a good final week but it wasn’t enough to cover the year that the GOP had registering voters.

After the October 11th deadline, there are now 4,157,140 Democrats and 3,244,123 Republicans registered to vote in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That gives the Dems a 913,017 advantage. A week ago, it was 911,621.

An additional 1,168,182 residents are independents are members of a smaller party. Altogether, there are now 8,569,445 registered voters in Pennsylvania.

Now that the deadline has passed, we can chart the total shift in voter registration from just after the primary on May 15th to just before the general on October 11th.

Only eight counties saw Democrats increase their margins over Republicans: Philadelphia (46,335), Delaware (10,623), Montgomery (8,666), Chester (3,482), Allegheny (2,094), Centre (1,733), Lehigh (806) and Dauphin (681).

The only one of these counties where Republicans still outnumber Dems is Chester. It’s also worth noting that the only SEPA county where the Democrats lost ground was Bucks (2,638). Whether Chester and Bucks could switch places will something to keep an eye on in the years ahead.

The real trend this year, however, was the continued exodus of Southwest Democrats. The Appalachian Dems who have been voting for the GOP on the presidential level for years are officially severing ties with their old party.

In the past six months Republicans have made the following net gains in these Southwest Counties: Westmoreland (15,582), Washington (7,637), Cambria (6,413), Fayette (6,106), Butler (5,624) and Beaver (4,933).

The GOP has also made strides in the Northeast, including Luzerne (10,938) and Lackawanna Counties (6,017). York County (8,937) also provided the Republicans will a healthy batch of supporters this year.

Despite it all, though, just one county in the commonwealth switched hands from Democrats to Republicans in the past six months: Clinton County.

10 Responses

  1. I had an interesting encounter the other day at a meeting where a life-long Republican from Franklin County said he was voting for Clinton because he felt that Trump has just about destroyed the social fabric that unites this country. He is absolutely not a Republican in name only.The other one was a life-long Democrat from Chester County who said he was voting for Trump because Clinton allowed United States servicemen and her own employee, the ambassador to Libya, to be murdered in Benghazi and then lied about it to the families. He is not a Reagan Democrat.

    Neither of these people changed their party registration. My takeaway is that party registration trends may not tell the complete story of this election’s outcome.

  2. I would never in my wildest dreams guessed that Clinton County was ever Dem, as the last sentence states.

    Who knew?

  3. Southwest PA democrats have rejected the current agenda of the national Democratic Party, which is too left. They are pro gun pro life and about the economy. With exception of the 8 counties, it appears this also goes for the rest of the state as well. It’s really not surprising.

  4. The Democrats increase their numbers in areas of the state where the population is increasing. The Republicans gain in areas of the state where the population is decreasing. PA continues to trend Democrat. This temporary Republican blip is from voters who were registered as Dems but have been voting Republican in Presidential elections for several cycles now.

  5. These are merely “Reagan Democrats”, who haven’t voted Democrat in years anyway. So while there is an advantage in registered voters gained for the GOP only, this isnt an entirely NEW crop of voters.

  6. Nick-

    1) Even though the “deadline has passed”, it will take a few more weeks for the county election boards to catch up, given the numbers reported here for registrations the final week. So, expect more changes to the counts over the next two weeks.

    2) If you are going to insist on using the useless Total Count that includes the InActives (who don’t vote), you should at least provide the Active counts as well to provide context:

    Active Dems: 3,718,995
    Active Reps: 3,002,502
    Active Oth: 999,730

    Of these, based on past presidential years, we would normally expect around 85% Rep, 80% Dem and 70% Other turnout, relative to the Active counts. Given this year’s lack of coordination between Trump and the RNC vs the high coordination between Clinton and the DNC, we may see Dem with better relative performance.

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