Voter registration in Pennsylvania for the upcoming General Election has closed and Republicans have hit an historic milestone: for the first time in 52 years the statewide voter registration advantage held by Democrats has fallen below 300,000 registered voters, specifically to 297,824 voters.
For context Democrats in Penn’s woods once enjoyed a 1.1 million voter registration advantage, but that margin has consistently declined with the drop accelerating this year. Not only did the GOP out-register Democrats in new voters, but also held an almost two-one advantage in party switches.
Democrats performed better following the coup that replaced President Joe Biden with Kamala Harris, but the resultant “joy” failed to slow the Republican voter registration trend. The GOP continued to steadily make gains up to the October 21st voter registration deadline.
In 2020 Democrats held a 685,818 voter registration advantage over Republicans. President Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania and won its 19 Electoral votes by just 81,660 votes. The GOP has cut the Democrat’s voter registration lead by 387,994 voters in the intervening four years.
In Pennsylvania polling has consistently shown the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to be a dead heat. In just the past week two polls have shown Republican challenger David McCormick slightly edging ahead of incumbent U.S. Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. prompting the Cook Political Report to move the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss up.”
Drilling down into the voter registration numbers we find three counties have flipped from blue to red in recent months. No counties flipped red to blue.
Bucks County is one of the four so-called “collar counties” outside of Philadelphia which in recent decades have gone from being solidly Republican to heavily Democrat. These counties, along with Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, are the most populous counties in the state and propelled the Biden win in 2020. That Republicans have reclaimed their registration lead in Bucks County is a major reversal of the recent Democratic trend.
Luzerne County in Northwestern Pennsylvania is a bellwether county that for decades was solidly Democratic. Located near Joe Biden’s home town of Scranton, Luzerne County has been trending Republican in recent years and completed the journey to a Republican majority county last month.
And, in Southwestern Pennsylvania Beaver County, which lays just Northwest of Pittsburgh continues the Republican trend in that region of the state. Beaver follows former Democrat bastions including Westmoreland, Washington, Fayette and Greene counties of moving into the Republican column – all of those counties experienced an upsurge in Republican registration this year as well.
In the last week of the registration period Allegheny County, which includes the City of Pittsburgh, had the largest total Republican registration increase of the voter registration period followed by Philadelphia and Montgomery counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Voter registration is a leading indicator of trends and momentum. Another indicator is mail-in ballot requests. In that category as well Democrats are falling behind. In both 2020 and 2022 Democrats far outpaced Republicans in mail-in voting. This year, however, the number of Democrat mail-in ballot requests significantly lags the number of requests at this point four years ago.
Republicans opposed mail-in voting in 2020, but have made a major push for mail-in votes, especially from low propensity voters. As a result while Democrats still lead in mail-in ballot requests the margin between the two competing parties has been substantially reduced.
With polls tied voter turn-out will be the key to victory. The GOP in Pennsylvania has succeeded in becoming more competitive in both voter registration and mail-in voting. The question now is will those gains translate into victory on November 5th?
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].)
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