Pennsylvania’s GOP Sweep Was No Fluke

Pennsylvania is on its way to becoming a red state.

In 2024, for the first time in modern history, more Republicans voted than Democrats in a Pennsylvania presidential election. Republicans delivered a dramatic margin of victory for President Donald Trump, which spared the nation the agony of a protracted recount. 

Even more auspicious results for the GOP happened down ballot. In what was unimaginable to most pundits, for example, GOP challenger Dave McCormick beat the odds to defeat three-term U.S. Sen. Bob Casey by a close, but decisive margin. Meantime, the red wave catapulted a Republican rising star, Dave Sunday, to the attorney general’s office, which Democrats have controlled since 2008. Incumbent GOP state treasurer Stacy Garrity won re-election by netting the largest number of votes in Pennsylvania history.

Then there are the striking examples of GOP success across the state. In Philadelphia, which hasn’t been represented in the state Senate by a Republican for a generation, voters elected 29-year-old Joe Picozzi. In the Lehigh Valley, a political swing region surging in growth with New York and New Jersey tax refugees, locals ousted incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Susan Wild. And northeastern Pennsylvanians retired six-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright from President Biden’s birthplace of Scranton. In another stunner, President Trump won both of these regions' congressional seats outright.

Heading into Election Day, the trends were clear. Of the 59 public polls released in 2016 tracking the Pennsylvania presidential race, Trump led in only two. In 2020, Trump led in only five of the 84 Pennsylvania polls released. This past election, Trump won half of the 82 Pennsylvania polls released.   

Republicans net-gained registered voters in every single Pennsylvania county, including in Philadelphia, ahead of the 2024 Pennsylvania primary. It’s a GOP feat unmatched in recent memory.

Driving much of the GOP’s registration gains was a process change at Pennsylvania’s Driver’s License Centers. Implemented by Pennsylvania’s Departments of Transportation and State, the underreported change required Pennsylvanians renewing or registering for a driver’s license to “opt out” of registering to vote instead of the previous protocol to “opt in.”

Thousands of Pennsylvanians, many of whom live in rural and exurban areas, where driving is a necessity, chose for years to remain unregistered to vote. For decades, Republican efforts to identify and register these Pennsylvanians bore little fruit because it required a costly process to persuade people to do something they did not want to do.

The procedural change was implemented toward the end of 2023. With driver’s licenses requiring renewal every four years, Pennsylvania is only half-way through the process of registering these presumably populist Pennsylvanians to vote. These gains have cut the statewide Republican registration deficit by more than half. 

In fact, the driver’s license process alone may yield a statewide Republican voter registration majority by the 2026 midterm elections. Changing a single button at Driver’s License Centers yielded the single biggest GOP registration surge since the Reagan administration. When accounting for voters deemed to be active by the Pennsylvania Department of State, the actual registered Republican deficit is down to 114,413 voters. That is a far cry from the 1.1 million registered voter deficit drowning Republicans at the start of Obama’s first term in 2008. 

Deemed to be a decisive competitive advantage for Democratic operatives, Republicans turned the table on early voting.  While Democratic early voters still bested Republicans by a 2:1 margin in 2024, it’s a remarkable improvement compared to the 1.1 million early vote shellacking by the Democrats in 2020, which made Republican victories simply unattainable in the four years since early voting was created. Pennsylvania Republicans are now adopting early voting at a rate that will blunt its impact as a tool exclusively benefitting the Democratic Party.

The post-election data also reveals that Pennsylvania’s electorate saw a five-point swing to the GOP on Election Day. Compared to the last presidential election, 66 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties saw higher Republican turnout. The outlier was the City of Philadelphia, which saw increased Democratic turnout but failed to reach the margin necessary to deliver statewide victory.

Overall statewide, turnout for the 2024 eneral Election increased by over 100,000 voters. These voters came from outside of southeastern Pennsylvania, home to Philadelphia and its suburban collar counties, that have followed the national trend of the college educated voting Democratic. 

While 54 of 67 counties improved their margins for Trump, the increased turnout came exclusively from outside of the highly-educated “Acela Corridor” running through Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Nonetheless, Philadelphia and its suburbs shifted toward  Trump by an average of nearly four points, with the largest shift coming from the City of Philadelphia itself. 

Pennsylvania’s 2024 General Election was not a fluke. It was a result of underreported environmental and bureaucratic trends that will position the GOP for future success in Pennsylvania. The state is now on a path to become the next Florida or Ohio, pending the ability of these newly elected Republicans to deliver on the agenda of the fledgling Republican majority.