Democrats have just been hit with a serious wake-up call after the Pennsylvania GOP announced it is registering former Democratic voters at four times the rate Republicans are turning blue.
The state is critical to Democrats if they hope to keep the Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024.
Unfortunately for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, this shift is not exclusive to Pennsylvania.
According to Reuters, this is happening across the country and in multiple swing states.
“I just got fed up and just felt like there has to be a better way,” said Beth Jones, 48, a retired Philadelphia police officer who registered as a Republican after three decades of voting for the Democratic Party.
“This is bad news for the Democrats,” said Kevan Yenerall, a political scientist at Clarion University in Clarion, Pennsylvania.
Calvin Tucker, deputy chair for the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said of the GOP’s efforts to engage with underserved communities:
“It is a citywide outreach. We will do canvassing, knocking on doors, standing on corners, and talking to citizens and neighbors about who we are and what we are trying to achieve.”
Terry Madonna, a senior fellow in residence at Millersville University, said the Dems can’t point to one thing for their failures:
“It’s not just inflation. I think it’s a combination of things.”
“Republicans are registering formerly Democratic voters at 4x the rate that Democrats are making the reverse conversion in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.” https://t.co/2ECzALetg7
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) April 7, 2022
From Reuters:
While registered Democrats still outnumber registered Republicans by more than half a million in Pennsylvania – 4 million Democrats to 3.4 million Republicans as of March 28 – the long-held Democratic advantage continues to narrow and is on pace to be the smallest in a general election since 2005.
The smaller gap could have significant implications for the race to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey. Pennsylvanians will also vote for governor in November to follow Democrat Tom Wolf.
In North Carolina, where a tight Senate race is expected due to the retirement of Republican Senator Richard Burr, Republicans so far this year have picked up three Democratic converts for every voter that Democrats have poached, according to state election board data.
Throughout 2021, the Republican advantage was about half that.
In Florida and Nevada, the numbers of registered Republicans rose in the first few months of the year while the ranks of Democrats declined modestly.
In New Hampshire and Arizona, the removal of inactive voters from registration rolls has led both parties to lose similar numbers of voters in recent months.
