GOP Registers Twice As Many New PA Voters: See County Breakdown

PENNSYLVANIA — "Rocking the vote" has been a progressive campaign slogan touted and primarily championed by the left in American elections for years.

Yet in Pennsylvania, it's the Republicans who have more effectively used new voter registration to expand the reach of their party in the lead up to the 2020 election. And though it may not seem like the GOP is winning this voter drive by a lot, in a state which Hillary Clinton lost to President Trump by just 44,000 votes in 2016, the "every vote counts" mantra may have never been so apt.

Since the primary back on June 2, Republicans have registered 135,619 new voters, according to the latest campaign statistics made available by the Pennsylvania Department of State. Democrats have registered less than half of that, with 57,985 new voters. And it's not just this summer. From Nov. 2019 to June 2020, Republicans out-registered Democrats 44,965 to 32,829.

There's likely a very simple reason for the GOP's success: their approach to what's safe and what isn't during the pandemic.

President Trump's campaign has been canvassing door to door in Pennsylvania and other crucial swing states for months now, with Republican spokespersons saying they've made more than 116 million new voter contacts through canvassing. They argue they've done it safely despite the pandemic by taking health precautions. This comes as President Trump himself tested positive for the virus early Friday morning.

Meanwhile, citing coronavirus concerns, former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign has knocked on zero doors. The Democrats have opted entirely for virtual events in a campaign strategy move all but unprecedented in modern politics.

But that's about to change.

Biden's campaign is preparing to launch its own canvassing effort in battleground ground states including Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reported Thursday, reflecting concern over the growing discrepancy in registrations. It's a sharp change in course for Democrats, who leveled scathing critiques at the GOP when Trump's canvassing drew media attention over the summer.

"The Trump campaign is risking the lives of their staff, the lives of voters, and risking become a super spreader organization during the middle of a pandemic," Lily Adams, a Democratic Party spokesperson, said in August.

"First the Biden campaign said door knocking endangered people's lives," Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, said on Twitter on Thursday. "Then just a couple of weeks ago, they said door knocking didn't have any impact in elections. What changed? They know they're being hopelessly outworked on the ground and downballot Democrats in key states have been freaking out about it. The Biden campaign has been nowhere while the Trump campaign is everywhere."

Democrats do still comprise a significant majority of all registered voters in Pennsylvania. There are 4,150,678 registered Democrats, and 3,426,563 registered Republicans, along with 1.2 million registered independent and third party voters.

In terms of exactly where this canvassing has been most effective for the Trump campaign, statistics show small GOP victories in new voter registrations in nearly every single county statewide. Unsurprisingly, the many sparsely populated rural counties around the state show the greatest gains.

And not only are Democrats not registering voters, they're suffering a net loss in many of the mid-state counties. It's a likely indication that Republican canvassing is not merely reaching Pennsylvanians who never voted; it's reaching Democrats who are turning Republican.

Since June, the Democrats have only been more successful than the GOP in six of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.: Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and Sullivan. The vast majority of all their gains — some 20,000 of their 57,000 new voters since June — are in the traditionally liberal bastions of Philadelphia and Montgomery counties.

Below is the county by county breakdown of total new voters registered from June through Friday, Oct. 2:

• Adams: Democrats gain 256, GOP gains 1,879
• Allegheny: Democrats gain 6,303, GOP gains 7,906
• Armstrong: Democrats lose 201, GOP gains 1,431
• Beaver: Democrats lose 36, GOP gains 2,592
• Bedford: Democrats lose 183, GOP gains 1,134
• Berks: Democrats gain 1,556, GOP loses 7,998
• Blair: Democrats gain 92, GOP gains 2,124
• Bradford: Democrats gain 73, GOP gains 1,108
• Bucks: Democrats gain 3,668, GOP gains 6,622
• Butler: Democrats gain 2,625, GOP gains 5,735
• Cambria: Democrats lose 539, GOP gains 2,463
• Cameron: Democrats lose 17, GOP gains 77
• Carbon: Democrats add 46, GOP gains 1,153
• Centre: Democrats lose 276, GOP gains 724
• Chester: Democrats gain 4,706, GOP gains 3,085
• Clarion: Democrats lose 153, GOP gains 613
• Clearfield: Democrats lose 208, GOP gains 1,761
• Clinton: Democrats lose 66, GOP gains 850
• Columbia: Democrats lose 79, GOP gains 804
• Crawford: Demorats lose 91, GOP adds 1,417
• Cumberland: Democrats gain 1,419, GOP gains 2,650
• Dauphin: Democrats gain 2,141, GOP gains 1,995
• Delaware: Democrats gain 5,723, GOP gains 1,978
• Elk: Democrats lose 173, GOP gains 773
• Erie: Democrats gain 15, GOP gains 1,746
• Fayette: Democrats lose 448, GOP gains 2,464
• Forest: Democrats lose 19, GOP gains 58
• Franklin: Democrats gain 289, GOP gains 2,629
• Fulton: Democrats lose 54, GOP gains 404
• Greene: Democrats lose 235, GOP gains 703
• Huntingdon: Democrats lose 80, GOP gains 788
• Indiana: Democrats lose 547, GOP gains 1,199
• Jefferson: Democrats lose 216, GOP gains 1,015
• Juniata: Democrats lose 48, GOP gains 404
• Lackawanna: Democrats gain 560, GOP gains 2,150
• Lancaster: Democrats gain 2,763, GOP gains 5,569
• Lawrence: Democrats lose 9, GOP gains 1,525
• Lebanon: Democrats gain 502, GOP gains 1,841
• Lehigh: Democrats gain 2,417, GOP gains 3,179
• Luzerne: Democrats gain 185, GOP gains 3,513
• Lycoming: Democrats gain 36, GOP gains 2,084
• McKean: Democrats lose 60, GOP gains 839
• Mercer: Democrats lose 9, GOP gains 1,410
• Mifflin: Democrats lose 55, GOP gains 978
• Monroe: Democrats gain 1,481, GOP gains 1,736
• Montgomery: Democrats gain 9,332, GOP gains 5,366
• Montour: Democrats gain 47, GOP gains 241
• Northampton: Democrats gain 2,257, GOP gains 3,342
• Northumberland: Democrats gain 30, GOP gains 1,205
• Perry: Democrats gain 5, GOP adds, GOP gains 805
• Philadelphia: Democrats gain 11,773, GOP gains 6,375
• Pike: Democrats gain 418, GOP gains 1,154
• Potter: Democrats lose 47, GOP gains 314
• Schuylkill: Democrats lose 65, GOP gains 1,889
• Snyder: Democrats gain 31, GOP gains 755
• Somerset: Democrats lose 335, GOP gains 1,207
• Sullivan: Democrats lose 132, GOP loses 24
• Susquehanna: Democrats lose 4, GOP gains 658
• Tioga: Democrats lose 37, GOP gains 813
• Union: Democrats gain 232, GOP gains 643
• Venango: Democrats gain 27, GOP gains 958
• Warren: Democrats lose 132, GOP gains 501
• Washington: Democrats lose 96, GOP gains 3,610
• Wayne: Democrats gain 185, GOP gains 848
• Westmoreland: Democrats lose 168, GOP gains 6,546
• Wyoming: Democrats gain 72, GOP gains 471
• York: Democrats gain 1,538, GOP gains 5,835

As he has since the beginning of the campaign, Biden continues to hold a polling lead over Trump in Pennsylvania. His lead is at 7.2 points as of Friday, according to a RealClearPolitics aggregate of a dozen major national polls run over the past two weeks.

But it's a lead that has slowly but steadily narrowed over the course of the summer, and GOP canvassing may be part of why. In early July, Biden's lead in that same aggregate of polls was nearly 12 points.