Summary
Overall in Pennsylvania the 251,084 Republican registration gain during the December 2022 to 2024 two year timeframe was driven by party changes (57.7%), voter maintenance activities (31.2%) and new registration (11.1%).
Democrat exceeded Republican new registrations in the December 2022 to 2023 timeframe, while Republican exceeded Democrat new registrations in the December 2023 to 2024 timeframe. Party changes were substantially higher than New Registrations in both timeframes.
However, Philadelphia and Allegheny counties skewed the Pennsylvania Republican gains. They both exhibited high new registrations favoring Democrats and high voter maintenance activities favoring Republicans. Excluding Philadelphia and Allegheny counties from the results yields: party change remains the largest contributor at 46.4%, new registrations rises to 39.9%, and voter maintenance drops to 4.6% of the Republican gain.
While Republican new registrations are highly touted, party changes and voter maintenance are rarely mentioned as contributors. The underlying drivers of all factors driving the Republican registration gain must be understood.
Pennsylvania State Analysis
Pennsylvania 2020 to 2024 Republican Gain
The Pennsylvania Democrat registration leads, the Republican gains, and the components of the Republican gains for data extracted from three SURE Full Voter Exports (FVE) is shown in Table 1.
The Republican registration gain decomposes into its components: Party changes, new registrations, voter maintenance.
Party changes are observed when a registrant changes their party (e.g., Democrat, Republican, Independent) in the SURE Registration System. From December 2022 to 2023 and December 2023 to 2024, about 57% of the Republican registration gains were due to party changes.
New registrations are either Pennsylvania residents registering to vote for first time or residents registering to vote who moved into Pennsylvania from other states. During the December 2022 to 2023 timeframe, there were 10,311 more Democrat than Republican new registrations. During the December 2023 to 2024 timeframe, new registrations contributed 20.1% to the Republican registration gain.
In the 2022 December to 2024 two year timeframe, about half of the New Registrations were under 25-years of age as shown in Figure 1.
Voter Maintenance includes:
Active to Inactive voter status changes, likely due to registrants moving out of Pennsylvania (94% Republican Gain)
Active voter deletions, likely due to deceased registrants ( -21% Republican Gain, i.e., a Democrat Gain)
Inactive to Active registrant Status changes likely when a Inactive registrant is approved to vote (15.2% Republican Gain)
During the two timeframes, the Voter Maintenance impact on the Republican registration gain was nearly equal in number.
See the Data and Analysis Method Section for a more detailed explanation of these components.
Pennsylvania County Analysis
The Republican 2024 Registration Lead for Pennsylvania Counties is plotted in Figure 2. When Democrats lead, the County registrations value is negative. Pennsylvania Voter registrations are dominated by Democratic Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties. Democrats lead county registrations in only 11 of the 67 Pennsylvania counties.
Pennsylvania County December 2022 to 2024 Republican Gain
Table 2 provides the contributions of the Pennsylvania County December 2022 to 2024 Active Registration Gain. This is a 2-year composite analysis while the previous Pennsylvania analysis evaluated 2023 and 2024 separately.
Two new components are included, both cancel-out when summed at the Pennsylvania State level:
Net moved into and out-of the county.
Other. The result of data integrity issues in the SURE System data.
The overall Pennsylvania result is summarized for this timeframe in the Total and Total Percentage columns at the top of Table 2. Party Changes is the largest component (57.67), followed by Voter Maintenance (31.24%), and New Registrations (11.12%).
However, Philadelphia and Allegheny counties skew the Pennsylvania results with their high Democrat New Registration (negative values) and Republican Voter Maintenance components. When these counties are removed from the analysis, the resulting totals are shown in Table 3 where Party Changes remains the largest component at 46.4% and the New Registration component rises to 39.9% with Voter Maintenance at just 4.6%.
Pennsylvania County December 2020 to 2022 Republican Gain
Table 4 provides the contributions of the Pennsylvania County December 2020 to 2022 Active Registration Gain.
Southeastern Pennsylvania County Republican Gains
Figure 3 and Table 5 show the Republican gains from 2022 to 2024 for the ten Southeastern Pennsylvania Counties.
Observations:
- Party Changes were the most important contribution in Bucks, Montgomery, Berks, Lehigh, Northampton, Chester, and 13 other PA Counties. Party Changes favored Republicans in all 67 PA Counties.
- New registrants were the most important contribution in Philadelphia (Democrat gain), York, Lancaster, Delaware (Democrat gain), and 48 other PA Counties. New Registrants favored Republicans in Bucks, Berks, York, Lancaster, and in 54 other PA Counties. New Registrants favored Democrats in Philadelphia, Lehigh, Northampton, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, Allegheny, Centre, and Dauphin Counties.
- Delaware was the only PA County where the Democrats gained registrants.
- Net moves into and out-of Delaware and Montgomery Counties increased the Democrat registrations and these counties had the highest number of net moves in PA.
- Active/Inactive status changes or deleted registrations in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, Lehigh, Northampton, Bucks, and Berks Counties were in the top 10 in PA and, in these SE PA counties, the changes increased the Republican registration gain.
Data and Analysis Method
The information in the tables and figures was derived from the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) Full Voter Exports (FVE). All Pennsylvania Counties maintain their registration and vote history information in SURE. The FVEs files are publicly available every Monday morning, therefore the specific December dates of the FVEs used in this analysis.
The FVE contains 154 data fields for each registrant. The following fields for were used in the analysis:
- County
- IDNumber – a unique identifier for each registrant. The first 9 digits of the IDNumber should be unique, followed by a dash and then a county ID code (01 to 67)
- DOB – Date of Birth
- RegDate – Date of Registration
- VtStatus – Voter Status (Active or Inactive)
- PtyCode – Party Code (for example, D=Democrat, R=Republican, I=Independent, …)
The analysis compares pairs of FVEs: called an earlier FVE and a later FVE.
Republican Active Registration Gain
The Democrat Active Registration Lead for each FVE is the number of Active Democrat registrations minus the number of active Republican registrations. This is calculated for Pennsylvania and each county.
The Republican Active Registration Gain is the Democrat Active Registration Lead in the earlier FVE minus the Democrat Active Registration Lead in the later FVE. This Gain is the easily computed base value for Pennsylvania and for each county.
Republican Gain Components
Party change component is determined when the Party Code for a registrant in the two FVEs is different and the Voter Status is Active in both FVEs.
New Registration component is determined when a registrant’s IDNumber appears with Voter Status Active in the later FVE and the IDNumber is not in the Earlier FVE. The age at registration is determined using the DOB and Registration Date.
Voter Maintenance component is determined by summing the following subcomponents.
- Deleted registrants are determined when a registrant’s IDNumber appears with Voter Status Active in the earlier FVE and not in the later FVE..
- Active to Inactive voter changes are determined when a registrant’s Voter Status changes between the two FVEs.
Net Moves into and out-of a County is determined when the first 9-digits of the IDNumber in the 2 FVEs match but the Counties are different and the Voter Status is Active the 2 FVEs. To avoid double counting, the Party Code must also match in the 2 FVEs.
The Other component is the difference between the above components and the Republican Gain. Essentially this is an error that results from data integrity issues in the SURE data.
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