Republicans in Pa. have cut Democrats’ voter registration advantage in half since 2020. Will that be Trump’s difference maker?

Democrats are losing their edge.

Since the last presidential election, Republicans have cut the Democratic voter registration advantage in Pennsylvania in half, from 685,818 in 2020 to 297,824 as of this week, which marked the voter registration deadline in the state. An Inquirer analysis of voter registration also shows a bump in unaffiliated voters here.

Five counties in the state, including Bucks County, flipped from a Democratic registration advantage to Republican from the last presidential election to this one and only three counties had a net gain of Democratic registrations in that four-year span. The shift is driven significantly by voters changing their party registration.

Statewide, Democrats have nearly 4 million registered voters. Republicans have 3.7 million and an additional 1.4 million are unaffiliated or registered with another party. Unaffiliated and third-party voter registration increased by a combined 124,189 from 2020 to 2024.

Republicans, and former President Donald Trump’s campaign, point to the numbers as a sign that the winds are at their back heading into a deadlocked election in less than two weeks.

“We’ve made up ground … since the last presidential election,” Trump senior adviser and Pennsylvania native Tim Murtaugh said. “Do you think that happened by magic? That’s the ground game. Registering voters is tangible proof of the strength. This hasn’t been cooked up in the last month. It takes a long time to make up a [300,000] voter registration advantage.”

But Democrats, by and large, say they aren’t worried. Registration has long been a lagging indicator of how people vote and the registration trends have been shifting toward the GOP for years without a clear impact on how the state votes.

Past voting behavior is far more predictive of how people vote in the state. And the last four voting cycles have heavily favored Democrats statewide despite a winnowing registration edge.

“You’ve seen Democrats do really well in every election since 2016 when they realized just how terrible the Trump presidency was,” said Brendan McPhillips, senior adviser on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign in Pennsylvania. “In 2020 in 2022 in 2023 — while Republicans were making marginal improvements on voter registration and pundits were screaming, ‘the sky was falling’ because of that and polling and come Election Day, Democrats showed up because they know what’s at stake.”

Still, Gov. Josh Shapiro said while stumping for Harris last week that he thinks his party needs to focus on shoring up registration efforts in Pennsylvania.

“Going forward, after this election, there has to be a concerted effort into targeting those who are not registered and making sure they understand what I’ve delivered in Pennsylvania, the Democrats have delivered in Pennsylvania and working specifically on voter registration,” the Democratic governor said.

He added that the state’s increase in independent or third-party voters is not unique to Pennsylvania. “We’re seeing that everywhere.”

When Harris entered the race upon President Joe Biden’s withdrawal in July, Democrats got a bump in registrations but the party never outpaced Republican registrations here.

Republicans had net registration gains in all but seven counties: Centre, Cumberland, Delaware, Erie, Jefferson, Montour, and Warren Counties.

Democrats only increased their registration edge in three increasingly blue suburban counties: Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester, and in Union County in the center of the state.

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat in Philadelphia, where Republicans saw a net gain, largely dismissed registration gains. He noted West Virginia had a majority Democratic voter registration for more than a decade as the state started voting solidly red. Parts of Western Pennsylvania look the same. The opposite is true in the state’s now solidly blue Democratic counties where voter registrations took more than a decade to reflect the way people voted.

But while registration often lags behind voting behavior, it is a useful tool for parties to organize their members. More names on the voter rolls means more targets for fundraising efforts and a vote they can more closely track or aim to get out to the polls on Election Day. Taking the step of reregistering can also indicate a more involved party member, Republicans argue.

“We saw huge shifts toward Democrats when Obama was running,” RNC chair Andy Reilly, who is from Delaware County, said. “Now you’re seeing it shift back. Many of these were people who may have voted with us but were never so moved to a degree of changing registration. They are now.”

“It really helps the ability of a campaign to get out the vote,” GOP strategist Charlie Gerow said. “Look at registration shifts and applications for mail ballots. We’ve taken pages from the playbook and executed them in some cases better than the Democrats.”

Most of the GOP gains came from party switchers — Democrats or voters not registered with a party becoming Republicans.

Peter Antonic, a 69-year-old retired aluminum plant worker from New Providence, was a registered Democrat voting for Trump for years before he switched this year.

“I was registered Democrat but was pretty fed up with both parties and then I rethought it,” said Antonic who voted for Trump the first and second time and plans to again.

Antonic said he was finally prompted to register as a Republican after a year of sensing crime had gotten worse nationwide and frustrations over the economy. He also started to feel he was in good company — his Trump-Vance sign is one of many in his neighborhood.

But sometimes registration shifts can be more complicated.

Diane Steidler, 66, of Lancaster County, changed from a Democrat to a Republican this year to vote against Trump in Pennsylvania’s closed primary election. She’s voting for Harris in the general election.

“I was so angry with what the Republican Party had become,” said Steidler, who described herself as an independent at heart. “It was my little way to make a statement to say, ‘What is wrong with you Republicans to elect such an abysmal choice for president?’”

Democrats are still leading among new registrations. The state gained a total of 1,139,176 new voter registrations since November 2020. Democrats gained 431,820 and Republicans gained 399,354. An additional 308,002 registered with none or another party.

New registrations are slightly more likely to be unaffiliated than they were four years ago. About 23.6% of new registrations claimed no party in 2020. That rose to 27% this year.

Most of the new registrations are unsurprisingly in population centers including Philadelphia, its suburbs, Pittsburgh and its suburbs, but there were also sizable gains in Cumberland County for Democrats and in Lancaster and the Lehigh Valley for Republicans.

Chloe “Cherry” Lang, a 20-year-old retail worker from Norristown, registered as a Democrat after she saw abortion bans threatening reproductive rights in states across the country.

“I wanted to vote for Josh Shapiro,” Lang said, though she said this week she’s still undecided in the presidential race this year.

Pennsylvania’s youngest voters are registering Republican at a rate slightly higher than millennial voters while still favoring Democrats overall. For example, Pennsylvania voters born in 1997, about 27 years old for this election, are 46% Democratic, 33% Republican, and 21% independent or supporting another party. But those who are 18 this year (born in 2006) are 38% Democratic, 38% Republican, and 21% independent or supporting a third party.

Danny Yang, a 19-year-old college freshman at George Washington University, who is from Media and casting his first ballot from his Delaware County hometown, registered as a Democrat.

“I’ve always been politically engaged and the Democratic Party always was more similar to my views,” he said, citing LGBTQ rights and the preservation of democracy as two important issues.

Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.