Republicans in Pennsylvania registered more new voters than Democrats in July, the same month that former President Donald Trump narrowly escaped assassination in the swing state.
Republicans added 19,127 new voters to their rolls last month, compared to 17,495 for the Democratic Party, according to a Axios Report.
A gunman opened fire on the former president during a rally in Butler County on July 13. Far from dampening their enthusiasm for Trump’s campaign, Republicans in Pennsylvania exuded energy and enthusiasm as they united in support of the party leader.
“When he stood up and raised his fist, we saw that as a call to action,” Ed Sheppard, communications chairman for the Doylestown Republican Committee, told WHYY News a week after the shooting.
“I think that was a moment when a lot of Republicans realized how hard he was fighting for us. And now we have to fight just as hard for him,” Sheppard continued.
Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign teams are aiming to increase voter turnout in Pennsylvania, a state widely seen as crucial to winning the presidency this election cycle.
The July voter registration report is not the first time Trump has edged out Harris in Pennsylvania. Between November 2023 and April 2024, the number of new Republicans registering to vote rose steadily while the number of new Democratic voters declined, according to a NOTUS Report.
Overall, Democrats still lead the state by about 400,000 voters, but that number represents a significant decline from just over a decade ago, when there were over a million more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania.
But the battle is far from over in a state that President Joe Biden won by about 80,000 votes four years ago. Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 came after Trump flipped the vote red in the 2016 presidential election. His surprise victory made him the first Republican presidential candidate to win the Keystone State since 1988.
State Senator Sharif Street, chairman of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, said in recent comments to NBC that his party lost the swing state in 2016 because it “did not adequately address rural areas of Pennsylvania.”
Street made the remarks while vowing that Democrats would not make the same mistake this election cycle. The Harris campaign has opened nine campaign offices this year in rural Pennsylvania counties where Trump won by double digits in 2020, the source said.
At a Democratic rally for Pennsylvania’s rural voters last weekend, Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.) emphasized the important role of Democrats, calling them “unsung heroes.”
“You are the secret. The real power is in the Republican districts, all of you,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said, later telling the newspaper that victory in Pennsylvania would come down to “rooms like this.”
While Fetterman struggles to secure rural support for Harris in his home state, some of his colleagues fear that another key Democratic voting bloc is on shaky ground with the Harris camp.
“The black vote is a challenge right now,” Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Gina Curry told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week.
Recent polls in Pennsylvania suggest that Trump enjoys significantly higher support among black voters than previous Republican presidential candidates. However, the head of BlackPAC, an organization that mobilizes black voters for Harris in Pennsylvania, downplayed the poll results.
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“I don’t see any evidence that black voters are leaning toward Trump in any way,” Adrianne Shropshire told the station. “I have no concerns that we are experiencing a racial political realignment right now. That’s not what we’re hearing.”
According to nationwide polls, former President Donald Trump is neck-and-neck with Vice President Kamala Harris for victory in the swing state.
