Pennsylvania Registration Statistics, 2016-present

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Registration is a lagging indicator and PA has trended Republican in every Presidential election for the past decade and thus registration (which was always overly skewed Democratic in PA) is now slowly normalizing (in a very polarized environment) to where the state is relative to the national picture, a tilt Republican swing state. This is a world of difference from the mid 2000s when it was a D+4.

Trump halted the progress on this underlying dynamic, but with him no longer President, it has resumed. Lancaster is a good place to find a lot of people turned off by Trump but naturally Republican and the Republican rebound in that county could be evidence of that. Bucks even more so.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Pennsylvania is not a tilt R swing state, and insinuating it is, is a pretty bad take, agreed on the other parts of the above post tho

It has voted to the right of the nation in the last two President elections, Trended Republican in the last four and even trended slightly Republican with Scranton Joe as the Democratic nominee. Sounds tilt R to me.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I stand by my post elsewhere. Democrats do not need to worry about Pennsylvania nearly as much as they need to worry about Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania is much less elastic than the other two, most of its rural counties are already 80% R, and the population-growth trends are very clear - the areas moving left are growing, the areas moving right are shrinking.

Only Fulton and Bedford are 80% R.


I have been following PA politics for 20 years almost. I am old enough to remember this same exact line being stated to say that PA would get more Democratic than it was in the 2000s, just like the same argument was used regarding Colombus, OH and its metro to say Ohio would become more Democratic. Since then, both states have become considerably more Republican, regardless of the fact that said X factor proved true (those areas are growing and have become more Democratic).

Also, just last year, many of you guys said it would be impossible for PA to trend Republican with Biden on the ticket, and yet it did. Republicans also won statewide 2 of the 3 row offices for the first time (in a Presidential year which never happened before) and won the statewide house ballot by about the same that Biden did.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Pennsylvania is not a tilt R swing state, and insinuating it is, is a pretty bad take, agreed on the other parts of the above post tho

I think Yankee is saying Tilt R in terms of PVI/partisan lean relative to the nation, not necessarily how it votes in an election. Saying PA would tilt R if the NPV was tied is definitely a fair take, and it's probably the accurate one, too.

Of course this is all happening in isolation. If California starts (albeit more slowly) goes the way of Texas, it might return Pennsylvania to zero PVI. At the rate Pennsylvania is going, it probably will be plurality Republican by the late 2020's.

I wonder how national voter party identification is going. At this point, it looks like Pennsylvania could vote to the right of Arizona and Georgia.

Several of us have said for years that GA and AZ could end to the left of the rust belt and PA as well.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Another factor that people need to consider about PA is that it is not just Philly that drives Democrats early lead on election night.  A lot of the counties have heavily Democratic towns or cities in them. The example I often cite is Crawford in 2010, how it reported with Sestak in the lead or tied at first and many thought this meant Toomey was doomed, but when it finished, it was 61% Republican.

These towns and cities are collapsing in population, ex mining and manufacturing areas. So while the population of these rural counties is declining, it is not necessarily hitting the Republicans as hard as it might seem at first glance, but in many cases it is the Democrats taking the hit. We also have one of many more examples as to Philly basically plateauing for the Democrats and likewise with Pittsburgh.

This is worse than a simple party registration switch, because the implication is that these people are moving out of the state and is thus a true loss for the Democrats rather than a Demosaur finally catching up to reality (though that certainly is a factor in these places too).

Pennsylvania is not a tilt R swing state, and insinuating it is, is a pretty bad take, agreed on the other parts of the above post tho

I think Yankee is saying Tilt R in terms of PVI/partisan lean relative to the nation, not necessarily how it votes in an election. Saying PA would tilt R if the NPV was tied is definitely a fair take, and it's probably the accurate one, too.

Yes, also the fact that it is R PVI is going to make it so that Republicans continually work to win it because it is easier to flip PA than it is to flip VA/CO and eventually will be likewise for GA/AZ. Pointing to WI and MI also doesn't mean much in this context, because WI and MI on their own cannot get to 270 without GA. This means Republicans not spooking naturally Republican voters in the Pittsburgh suburbs, Lancaster and Bucks county into voting Democratic.