Republicans obliterate Democrats’ voter-registration edge in crucial swing state
I’ve been a working GOP political consultant for more than 40 years. One of the most amazing stories in politics in that time is the way the GOP in Pennsylvania has clawed back from a voter registration deficit of more than a million votes to essentially parity.
In the mid-2000s, Pennsylvania Democrats maintained a healthy voter registration edge of between 450,000-500,000 statewide. That’s what Republicans dealt with in the late U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter’s successful 2004 re-election campaign, which I managed, as he beat Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel that fall by nearly 591,000 votes.
Later, in the Obama years, the Democrats’ statewide advantage ballooned to just above 1 million voters. Nevertheless, the state remained competitive for the GOP in statewide races, often because the conservative Democrats in Southwestern Pennsylvania at times voted for Republican candidates.
New registration numbers recently released show the Democratic advantage among active voters is less than 50,000: D+ 49,789 to be exact. (All the voter registration numbers cited here come via the non-partisan voter data firm, L2 Data, which gets its source data from the state and the 67 counties.)
Here are the current registration stats, as of the beginning of March:
- 41.9% of PA voters are registered as Republicans
- 42.6% are registered as Democrats
- The remaining 15.5% are Independents, a grab bag of voters who are neither Republican nor Democrat.
In raw numbers, PA now sports: 3,414,974 Republicans, 3,464,763 Democrats, and 1,252,562 Independents
In a state with 8.13 million active voters, D+ 49.7k is essentially a tie. So, in the past 15 years or so, Pennsylvania Democrats have watched their voter registration advantage shrink from about 1 million to … zero. (PA designates a voter as ‘inactive’ if they haven’t voted for 5 years; if the voter does not vote in two subsequent federal elections, then the voter is cancelled.)
The Democratic advantage is nearly all contained within the 8 counties in the Philadelphia media market. As a group, the three exurban counties there – Lehigh, Northampton and Berks –are about even in registration. Democrats hold a solid advantage in the four collar counties and a huge advantage in the city itself. The Pennsylvania Democrats’ advantage in the Pittsburgh media market is a negligible 25,600.
The other four markets, plus the out-of-state counties, have GOP registration majorities.
- Here are the voter registration figures broken down by the state’s six indigenous TV markets:
- Philly TV market: 3,361,516 total voters, or D+ 670,999 registration is 31.6/51.6/16.8% R/D/I
- Pittsburgh TV market: 1,734,546 total voters, D+ 25,674 registration is 42.3/43.8/13.9% R/D/I
- Harrisburg TV market: 1,283,684 voters, R+ 291,393 registration is 53.1/30.4/16.5% R/D/I
- Scranton TV market: 902,915 total voters, R+ 140,496 registration is 50.6/35.1/14.3% R/D/I
- Johnstown-Altoona TV market: 444,372 total voters, R+ 138,588 registration is 59.5/28.3/12.2% R/D/I
- Erie TV market: 233,556 voters, R+ 19,848 registration is 47.2/38.7/14.1% R/D/I
- Out-of-state markets (six PA counties get their TV from out-of-state stations, i.e. NYC, Buffalo): 173,710 voters, R+ 56,559 Registration is 58.9/26.3/14.8% R/D/I
Of the top 10 most populous counties in the state, five are majority Democratic while five are majority GOP. The five majority Democratic counties are Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester counties. The five majority GOP counties are Bucks, Lancaster, York, Berks, and Westmoreland counties.
To be clear, voter registration and voter behavior are two separate things, which the recent special election in Lancaster County demonstrated yet again. As I’ve long said, your voter registration status is a lagging indicator of your political sensibilities, but in the near term – perhaps even this year – Pennsylvania Democrats will wake up to the state having more Republicans.