According to state data released after voter registration expired Monday evening, the Democratic Party is losing ground to the Republican Party in the important swing state of Pennsylvania, with Democrats changing their party identification more than twice as frequently as Republicans.
When the sign-up session finished at midnight on Monday, the total number of registered voters in the state was 9,088,583. Registered Democrats led registered Republicans by 3,971,607 to 3,673,783.
In Pennsylvania, more than 1.4 million voters are registered as third-party or independent.
Though the Democratic Party has roughly 44% of registered voters compared to the GOP’s 40%, its lead over Republicans has dwindled this year.
In 2020, there were 9,090,962 registered voters in Pennsylvania across all parties, slightly more than the 9,088,583 voters registered this time.
In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by 1.17 percentage points. Democrats had more registered voters than Republicans that year, 4.2 million to 3.5 million. According to the data, Democrats enjoyed a registration edge over Republicans of 685,818 voters in an election won by Biden by 80,555 votes.
This year, the GOP has reduced their lead to 297,824. When comparing registered voters this election year to 2020, Democrats lose 257,281 voters, while Republicans gain 428,537 registered votes.
The Trump campaign on the ground in Pennsylvania celebrated the data, saying “Kamala Camp HQ is no doubt wondering what the heck their 400 paid staffers and 50 offices in Pennsylvania have been doing all this time, since their only output appears to be drumming up some meaningless stories about office openings and their supposedly well-oiled ground game.”
This season, more than twice as many previously registered Democrats changed their party identification as registered Republicans left the party. According to Pennsylvania Department of State data, 54,668 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation, while only 25,634 Republicans did.
The data is split down by county, with Philadelphia revealing that 18,928 Democrats changed their party allegiance, while only 3,401 Republicans did so. Bucks County, which is located outside of the City of Brotherly Love, recorded 2,089 Democrats changing their party identification, compared to 1,624 Republicans. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest metropolis, 6,564 Democrats and 2,202 Republicans switched parties.
The registered voter data comes after reports that the Democratic Party is growing concerned that the Harris campaign is unable to successfully connect with Pennsylvania voters.
Poor campaign management and staffers who lack contacts with Democratic political leaders in Pennsylvania are allegedly undermining the campaign, Politico reported last week. According to the publication, Democrats are concerned that the campaign’s state manager is unfamiliar with Philadelphia, the state’s largest city, and that campaign officials have failed to invite local Democratic politicians to events in the state and have not properly used surrogates.
Politico stated that it spoke with 20 Democratic legislators, allies, and party leaders for the piece, and all were dissatisfied with Harris’ campaign efforts.
“Our campaign is running the largest and most sophisticated operation in Pennsylvania history,” Harris’ national campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez told AWN Digital when asked about the allegation last week. “While Trump’s team still refuses to tell reporters how few staff they have in the state, we have 50 coordinated offices and nearly 400 staff on the ground.”
“While the Trump campaign closed its’minority outreach offices,’ we began investing in targeted advertising to Black and Latino voters in August 2023 and have since spent more on outreach to these groups than any prior presidential campaign. The Vice President is also actively campaigning in Pennsylvania, spending one out of every three days in the state in September.
Vulnerable Democratic Sen. Bob Casey made national headlines last week when he distanced himself from Democratic Party leaders and released a campaign ad in which he “bucked Biden” and “sided” with former President Trump.
The advertisement shows a married pair, Republican Marygrace and her Democrat husband Joe, hailing Casey as a “independent,” highlighting his support for Trump’s trade policies and efforts to “protect fracking” from the Biden administration.
“Our marriage is pure bliss!” But on politics, we simply disagree. Except for Bob Casey. Marygrace comments, “He’s independent,” and her husband responds, “That’s right!”
“Casey’s leading the effort to stop corporate greedflation and price-gouging,” Marygrace adds. “Casey went against Biden to defend fracking, and he joined with Trump to kill NAFTA and impose taxes on China to prevent them from cheating. So in this house, we all believe that Bob Casey is doing the right thing for Pennsylvania.”
Casey has been in the Senate since 2007, eventually becoming a mainstay within the Democratic Party, voting on legislation that Biden backed 98.5% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight data. He is currently facing his most difficult re-election campaign yet, up against Republican candidate Dave McCormick.
According to the AWN Power Rankings, the presidential race in Pennsylvania is a toss-up, while the Senate race is leaning Democratic. This week, however, the Cook Political Report changed the Senate race from a Democratic lean to a toss-up, emphasizing Casey’s challenging re-election challenge.
Pennsylvania is billed as the state that will most likely decide the outcome of the general election on November 5. According to an AWN survey of Pennsylvania voters published late last month, Harris leads Trump by two points (50-48%) among registered voters, but the race is tied at 49% among potential voters.
