Republicans continue to gain in PA Registration

Republican Gain 4,675 net voters this week

As has been the case for several years in a row, Republicans continued to gain with the newest data released by the PA Secretary of State. (Kudos to Al Schmidt and his team on the weekly update and increasingly helpful products they are putting out.) Data here.

Republicans gained in 60 of the 67 counties this week. Biggest gain by % for the GOP was in Potter county where they needed almost half a percent in a week. Biggest raw gain was in Berks county where GOP picked up 601 votes.

Dems biggest gain was Centre netting 159 votes or 0.15% for the week. One thing I would not in Centre (the home of Penn State) is there is no sign of a massive student voter registration drive that we saw in the Obama era.

On the key counties we’re watching Luzerne and Bucks continued to see real GOP gains throughout the week.

Again no evidence of the so-called Swiftie bump for Democrats in registration. (I say this as a bit of a swiftie my self)

For even more fun we can go back and look at where things stood at the 2022 Presidential election.

The biggest gain is Fayette that moved net 16 points towards Republicans. The GOP gained in net in 64 of 67 counties. The only counties that moved towards the Democrats were Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware. Even Philadelphia moved 3 points to the GOP and Allegheny moved 2 points to the GOP based on registration.

Now registration tends to be a lagging indicator so no one should spike footballs on this, and as the Democratic data operative Tom Bonier likes to repeatedly point out that we do not know what the composition of the independents are. (His firm claims they are lean to hard left, which is a claim I am fairly skeptical of)

At the same time when party registration very highly correlates to voting (Trump currently winning 91%+ of Republicans), I would much rather be the party gaining than the party that is losing.