The Republican Rise in Registration Means Nothing in Pennsylvania

The colors might be backwards, but you get the point.

I love when I get stupid political e-mails. Especially from Republican campaigns (disclaimer: I take myself off of Democratic ones). I really like when I get an email that excitedly tells me that "62,828 Democrats have changed their party registration to Republican this year!" I understand that PA GOP Chairman Gleason had a tough year last year, and that he wants to excite his base- I can't blame him for that. Don't buy too much into that though. It's sort of a bogus statistic.

1. The Democratic registration advantage was about a million as of last year. Don't get me wrong, they should be happy they are gaining on that. Still- 62,828 isn't the kind of dent into 1,000,000 that they'd like it to sound like.
2. About 25-30,000 Republicans have switched over to Democrat as well- further watering down the progress of the GOP.
3. Pennsylvania is almost like a southern state in that there are a lot of registered Democrats outside of the eastern part of the state who haven't been voting Democratic for decades now. In short, those people have been gone from the Democratic Party for a long time, now Democratic candidates won't waste their time trying to fool themselves into believing they can reach them.
4. Much of the GOP's progress is in southwestern PA, which has been voting more and more Republican from 2000 onward. Since John Kerry and Al Gore carried much of the region, and the 2006 mid-terms produced Democratic victories, Democrats have been crushed in that region. It makes sense that a region that used to be Democratic, but is increasingly not in November elections, would finally switch over it's registration with a big primary coming up.

None of this is to say that Democrats should be excited to see Republicans swell their ranks- we shouldn't. It's more so to say that it's not the big deal that the press is making it sound. Democrats handily carried the state for President, Senate, Attorney General, Auditor General, and Treasurer in 2012 while losing these same voters pretty handily. The bigger problem these voters moving right has caused is in Congressional and state legislative contests, where Democrats can't possibly win with the current geography. Democrats win a hand full of towns, and they win them very handily, and it's enough to carry the state. It's also very easy to pack all the Democratic voters into a few districts then, and never worry about them again. 

Bottom line is, congratulations to the GOP on it's gain of around 35,000 voters after accounting for those they lost. It doesn't change the math on the state much, or the fact that Pennsylvania is down to about 81% white now, and dropping fast. They cannot win with the current coalition they have.