PA Voter Registration Hits Record High for Primary

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Last updated on February 10th, 2013 at 02:47 am

It was announced this evening by the Pennsylvania Department of State that voter registration for Tuesday’s primary has set a new record with 8,328,123 people registered to vote. This number is only 38,540 voters behind the all time record which was set during the 2004 general election campaign.

“It is unprecedented for a primary election in Pennsylvania, and it is very exciting to see so many people want to participate in the electoral process,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortes said.

Since January of this year, 218,923 new voters have registered. Of these, 152,775 registered Democratic and 40,195 registered Republican. There has also been a large group of registered voters who switched their affiliation to the Democratic Party, 164,026 registered voters changed their affiliation to Democratic and 14,887 changed to Republican.

It is impossible to tell where these voters are coming from because the form does not require voters to specify what party they are leaving. “Whether for the first time as a new voter, or for the first time with a different party, these numbers show a growing interest in participating in the April 22 primary election,” Cortes said.

By age group the highest number of registered voters is 45-54. The lowest group is 18-24. This demographic breakdown is one of the key reasons why Hillary Clinton is favored to win here on Tuesday.

It will be interesting to see what kind of impact these 200,000+ new voters will have on the general election in the fall. Pennsylvania is a state that has voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections. This is a trend that I expect will continue in the fall.

Press Release:

http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?beat=BEAT_ALL&view=LATEST&resourceid=3713595