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Over the past few months, Pennsylvania has experienced a notable shift in voter registration trends favoring Republicans which could have significant implications on the 2024 presidential election.
According to a new report from Axios, Republican voter registrations outpaced Democrats in Pennsylvania, adding 19,127 new voters to their roles in July.
Democratic Party new voter registrations, by comparison, increased by 17,495.
In addition, these numbers are only one piece of the puzzle in terms of Pennsylvania’s registration data throughout the year. Throughout 2024, Keystone State Republicans registered 94,603 voters as of August, Axios reported, compared to the Democrats’ 87,325 new registrations.
While these gains are significant, Democrats still lead in overall voter registrations across the state. Currently, their party holds an estimated 400,000 voter lead in registrations, with 3.9 million affiliated Democratic Party voters, according to the report.
Republicans, meanwhile, hold 3.5 million registrations, the report found.
This lead is considerably narrower than it was only 10 years ago, when Democrats led their opponents with a more than one million voter registration advantage, according to the Washington Examiner.
This closing gap could be fatal to the Harris campaign, especially because voter registration data for the Democratic Party has shifted in reverse for the party since President Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes only four years ago.
The state is also one of the most crucial tossups of the 2024 cycle, with polling averages indicating a dead heat between Harris and Trump.
As of Wednesday, the RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump narrowly leading Kamala Harris by a margin of 0.2 percent in Pennsylvania (47.7 to 47.5 percent).
In even more negative news for the Harris campaign, polling in Pennsylvania has substantially over-favored Democrats in August polling, as it had Biden leading by an average of 5.8 points in 2020, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading by an average of 9.2 points in 2016 during these same periods.
Biden carried the state by just 1.2 points, while Clinton lost it to President Trump by 0.7 points in 2016.