In 2016, Trump only carried PA by 44,292 votes out of 6 million cast – a margin of just 0.7%. Since then 961,106 people have registered to vote in the Keystone state. Here’s what we know about citizens who have registered since 2016: New voters are disproportionately young and Democratic.
Since 2016, 44% of new registrants are Democrats, compared to just 30% of new registrants who are Republicans.
New PA Voters by Party | |||
Democrat | Other | Republican | Unaffiliated |
44.65% | 3.10% | 30.90% | 21.33% |
Young voters are surging along with Democratic registrants: a full 52% of registrants since 2016 are people 18-29 years old. The second largest cohort of new voters is 30-39 year olds.
New PA Voter Registrants By Age | ||||
18-29 | 30-39 | 40-49 | 50-64 | 65+ |
52.70% | 16.57% | 9.89% | 12.48% | 8.29% |
For those who do register and do not affiliate with either party, we know from polling these voters that they are much more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate.
Democrats are particularly strong in traditional strongholds:
- 66% of new registrants in Philly are Democrats compared to just 11% Republican
- 53% of new registrants in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) are Democrats, compared to just 22% Republican
Traditional battlegrounds are also seeing a strong Democratic edge:
- Lackawanna County (Scranton), a county carried by Trump and where he has spent significant time, saw 47% of new registrants register as Democrats and just under 30% register as Republicans
- There’s a similar story in the Lehigh Valley where 47% of new registrants are Democrats, compared to just 23% Republicans
Donald Trump may think Joe Biden wants to abolish the suburbs, but all indications are that Pennsylvania’s suburbs want to abolish Trump:
- Delaware County saw 52% of new voters register as Democrats while just 25% registered as Republicans
- Montgomery County saw 51% of new registrants register as Democrats compared to 24% as Republicans
- Chester County saw 45% of new registrants register as Democrats compared to 28% as Republicans
- Bucks County saw 42% of new registrants register as Democrats compared to 31% as Republicans
In a previous analysis, TargetSmart data identified voters who moved out of state and were purged from voting rolls in Pennsylvania. Since 2016, Democrats have added 414,483 new voters, a significant advantage over the 281,788 GOP registrations added since Trump narrowly carried the state.
This data shows that President Trump clearly faces a steeper climb to repeating his victory this November.
Note on methodology
TargetSmart compiles a national voter file from local election officials, commercially available sources and modeled data. This analysis matches the current file with an archived 2016 file to track patterns among new registrants, movers, and others who have dropped off the national file entirely. The topline data that this analysis is based on can be found here.