Republicans were on track to lead Pa. voter registrations for the first time in 30 years. Democrats think they’ve stopped the trend.

Hunters. Churchgoers. Felons.

These are among the groups of untapped voters that Republicans targeted at sportsmen’s conventions, Walmarts, and county fairs that helped them come within striking distance of taking the lead as the political party with the most registered voters in Pennsylvania for the first time since the state began tracking registration data in 1992.

For decades, Democrats held a commanding registration lead over Republicans in the nation’s most critical swing state. Democrats had 916,000 more registered voters, or 10.5%, than Republicans in 2016 when President Donald Trump first won the state.

But Republicans have spent the last few years making major gains, reducing the gap between parties to a near tie last year, with Democrats only leading by 1.9%, or 170,000 voters, in November 2025.

Pennsylvania Democratic Party leaders had deprioritized the importance of voter registration in recent years, focusing their time and money on turnout efforts and leaving voter registration to outside groups. Meanwhile, Republicans were doubling down in communities that voted for Trump to deepen their hold on rural counties, capitalize on rapidly reddening parts of Pennsylvania, and flip swing counties like Bucks.

Right-wing influencer Scott Presler recalled last summer at a voter registration training for the Pennsylvania Republican Party how GOP organizers were showing up in places where Democrats had given up.

“We registered hundreds of voters, and the Democrats didn’t even have a table,” Presler said, recalling his experience working a table at the Big Butler Fair in Western Pennsylvania.

But those GOP gains have begun to stall.

In 2025, Democrats slowed and eventually began to narrowly reverse Republican gains in the state. The changes came after the state party’s new leader, handpicked by Gov. Josh Shapiro, began to make key investments in party-led voter registration efforts. Third-party and unaffiliated voters are the fastest-growing voter segment in Pennsylvania.

For the last five months, Democrats have outperformed Republicans in new voter registrations, staving off a Republican plurality for now and making it less certain for the future.

Democrats are expected to perform well in this year’s midterms, riding a wave of anger at President Donald Trump. But the party’s ability to continue registering new voters, even when political winds aren’t in its favor, will be key to Democrats’ ability to win the state in 2028 when the presidency and a Senate seat are on the line.

As of March, Democrats hold a 2% voter advantage over Republicans, with 177,000 more voters than Republicans eight months ahead of the midterms, according to Department of State data.

“Campaigns matter,” said Eugene DePasquale, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “But I’ve often felt that [voter registration] is the canary in the coal mine. It is the poll before the poll.”

Over the last two years, Republicans went all-in on voter registration operating on the assumption that if more voters had an R next to their name they’d be more likely to cast their ballot for Republicans on Election Day.

“If you show up to a Phillies game wearing a Phillies hat, you’re more likely to be rooting for the Phillies,” said State Sen. Greg Rothman, the chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

According to state voter registration data analyzed by The Inquirer, the split between Republicans and Democrats in the state fell from 10.5% in November 2016 to just 1.9% in November 2025. In that time span, Democrats slightly widened their lead in registrations against Republicans just once — in the 2018 midterms — as voters overwhelmingly backed Democrats in opposition to Trump’s first-term agenda.

Voter registration is typically considered a lagging indicator — a voter who chooses to change their party registration typically has been voting with their new party long before making it official.

“Voted for Trump? Make it official: Switch to Republican today,” reads some of the signage Presler’s Early Vote Action group has used at its different events across the state.

Presler, who moved to Pennsylvania in order to campaign to flip it red, has hosted at least two trainings for the state party to help them register more voters. He celebrates every individual voter he helps register or change party registrations on X, and ahead of the 2024 election posted weekly updates on the statewide voter registration numbers.

In his training to the state GOP last June, Presler listed venues where he has hosted voter registration drives in hopes of targeting groups he thought may be attracted to conservative values and could be ripe with potential voters who support Trump. Among the groups: felons, hunters, and religious worshipers.

“I want every single mosque. I want every single Christian church. I want to get into every Mass. I want to get into every synagogue,” Presler said. “We must be doing a better job, because 30% of Christians are not registered to vote.”

“We must be everywhere,” Presler added, asking committee members to attend every fair and festival in their home counties to register more voters. He wants to take a more formal role in Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, too, and is running for state committee in Beaver County.

In the decade since Trump was first elected, Democrats only made gains in voter registration in the Philadelphia suburbs — Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties — and Cumberland County near Harrisburg.

Republicans gained ground in each of the state’s remaining 63 counties, including deep-blue Philadelphia. The GOP saw particular success in Carbon, Mercer, Elk, and Westmoreland Counties where Democrats went from narrowly leading in registrations in 2016 to trailing by 18% to 32% in 2025.

Republicans’ efforts to grow their share of voters rapidly accelerated after 2022. With Democrat Joe Biden in White House, the GOP cut Democrats’ advantage by two-thirds in just three years.

There is no readily discernible correlation between Pennsylvania’s voter registration in a given year and the results of that year’s election. For example, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 0.7% in 2016 at a time when Democrats still boasted a 10.5% registration advantage. Four years later, Biden beat Trump by 1.2% and won the presidency when his party’s registration edge had shrunk to 7.5%.

The last two gubernatorial elections have been blowouts (Democrat Tom Wolf won reelection by 17.1% in 2018 and Shapiro won by 14.8% in 2022) but the registration advantage for Democrats in those years was just 9.8% and 6.2%, respectively.

Overall, Democrats have underperformed their registration advantage in the last three presidential elections by an average of about 7.5% while overperforming in the past two gubernatorial elections by an average of about 8%.

A voter’s party registration is an indicator of who they may vote for but not a guarantee. And the state’s growing share of third-party and independent voters has increasing power to sway elections.

In Pennsylvania, much of the Democrat-to-Republican shift can be traced back to the 1980s when white, working-class voters began to support Republican candidates like Ronald Reagan, said Stephen Medvic, a political-science professor at Franklin and Marshall College.

But decades passed before the state’s voter registration split reflected that trend.

“I don’t think there’s a point at which you can say, ‘This was the tipping point,’ but I think it started quite a while ago. Medvic said. “And registration just kinda catches up to all that.”

Between 2020 and 2024, the voter registration advantage between Democrats and Republicans was cut in half.

That was demonstrated in the lead-up to the 2024 election, when Republicans successfully flipped key swing counties, including Bucks and Luzerne, and Republicans took the lead in voter registration there.

In Bucks, one of Pennsylvania’s most politically split counties, Democrats in 2016 held the voter registration advantage by 2%, or 9,382 voters. By 2025, Republicans had a 2% voter registration advantage, or 10,216. Months after the party registration flip, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county since 1988.

In Luzerne County, the flip was more stark. The longtime Democratic stronghold went from a 16.5% Democratic voter advantage in 2016, or nearly 34,000 registered voters, to a 3% Republican voter advantage in 2025, or nearly 7,000 more Republicans registered than Democrats there.

Rothman said the explanation for growing GOP support in the battleground state is simple: Republicans have a better message.

“The Democratic Party has abandoned the policy positions that have broad appeal,” Rothman added.

And it’s no coincidence, he argued, that Pennsylvania Republicans had one of their best years ever in 2024 — sweeping every statewide office and putting Trump in the White House — on the heels of an election cycle that prioritized voter registration.

As Republicans’ share of newly registered voters increased, Democrats were more focused on get-out-the-vote efforts and urging mail voting.

Nationally, Democrats turned out roughly the same percentage of their voters in 2024 as they did in 2020, said Tom Bonier, a national Democratic political strategist. But that successful turnout wasn’t enough. The party’s overall share of voters had shrunk, as new voters were more likely to register as Republicans ahead of the election than Democrats.

“Democratic deficiencies in voter registration over that four-year period likely cost them the election,” Bonier said.

DePasquale, the new Democratic state chair, last year pledged to make voter registration a top priority. The party, he said, would begin focusing specifically on registering Democrats and abandon its yearslong practice of investing in non-partisan voter registration drives.

“I’m all for people being registered,” he said. “But the Democratic Party is out to register Democrats.”

It appears the focus is paying off.

After outpacing Republicans for the past five moths, Democrats are looking to grow their registration total as November approaches.

DePasquale said the state party is focusing specifically on registering Democrats in must-win U.S. House districts and state Senate seats as the party looks to flip chambers in both Washington and Harrisburg.

But Republicans aren’t concerned by the trend yet. Rothman said the party is still actively registering new Republicans and framed the Democratic rebound as an inevitability.

“It had to stop at some point, it had to slow down,” Rothman said.

The upswing in Democratic registration may mirror the gains the party saw following the overturn of federal abortion rights in 2022 and immediately after Harris became the Democratic nominee in 2024. In both those cases, the Democratic improvements turned out to be temporary responses to current events rather than sustained shifts in the electorate.

Current changes, DePasquale said, are likely the result of momentum from Democratic wins in local races in 2025 and backlash to Trump. To convert those gains into something long-term, he said, Democrats will have to prove themselves.

“The battle always goes forward,” DePasquale said. “When Democrats get back into power nationally we’ve got to deliver.”