Thread by @lara_putnam

So @tbonier's thread on the predominance of women registering to vote in swing states in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade inspired me to check recent shifts in partisan registration in PA.
tl;dr New gains are neither Dem nor GOP but rather *overwhelmingly* Independents

As a reminder, this is what long term registration trends in PA have looked like. On balance since 2015 Dems have made no gains, GOP have gained half a million voters, & Independent/Other parties have gained about 200,000 registrants

If we look just at changes from election to election, the massive Republican registration gains between the 2020 primary & 2020 general election really stand out: as do Dems' declines in every 6 month stretch since then

(for details on the distinct factors that can drive registration declines, see this absurdly long thread👇 I seem to have written in a fit of 2 am madness 4 weeks ago. 😳)

Ah: meant to link to this one

I didn't happen to pull June 24 stats as a benchmark & they're not automatically available: what I do have is July 11 which we can compare backwards, to see what had happened between the 2022 primary & early July, & forwards, to see that has happened since.

Remember these sets are for different time periods. Basically in the last 4 wks PA added as many Independent/Other voters as in the 6 months from Nov2021-May2022: and GOP gains, which had been powering forward since last summer, ground nearly to a halt

If we look just at changes to GOP & Dem totals, county-level registration changes from January 2022 thru the May primary & from the primary thru the start of July had shown vanishingly few bright spots for Dems. Even in Allegheny county Republicans were making net gains.

The last month has been starkly different. Dems not only accelerated their pace of adding net voters in Delco Montco Chester & Dauphin: they turned from net losses to net gains in Allegheny, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Centre, Cumberland, Northampton, Bucks (wait there's more)

...WYOMING, McKEAN, CENTRE, FRANKLIN & POTTER. All saw their net levels of major party registrations shift _in the direction of Democrats_ as the combined result of party changers and new registrations over the past month.
No really.

But in case Dems are thinking post-Roe new women voters=done deal: no. Again, the big story is that 2/3 of the 5,800 net voters added in PA over the past month have registered Independent or other.
In some counties the total # of Independents grew by over 1% in a single month👀

The consistency of the Independent/Other surge—incl across rural counties in west, north, & SCPA—suggests mobilization routes outside of organized campaigns (to @cmMcConnaughy's important point👇). Think informal networks, & media & social media impacts

@cmMcConnaughy Update: Thanks to the foresight of @TuesdaysToomey I now have PA voter reg data as of June 27 2022 to compare before & after Dobbs exactly, & it's gobsmacking. The first 5 weeks after the primary were a smooth continuation of the previous 6 months of GOP domination. Since then?👀

@cmMcConnaughy @TuesdaysToomey Here's the updated map of pre+post Dobbs trends. 5 wks before Dobbs: net GOP gains almost everywhere. Since Dobbs: Allegheny Bucks & almost all of SCPA =sizable net Dem gains
...w/Northampton Butler Franklin CentreWyoming McKeanVenangoPerry PikePotter Fulton Snyder net blue too😳

@cmMcConnaughy @TuesdaysToomey Just saw this great @BethMRodgers @ulleryatintell article on PA voters since Dobbs on the front page of the Somerset Daily American. Worth reading for great quotes: + fascinating to see these developmnts themselves shape the political narrative in places far outside any blue core

@cmMcConnaughy @TuesdaysToomey @BethMRodgers @ulleryatintell Ok: never let it be said that I do not live to serve. Folks had questions about what the heck Lehigh county in the post-Dobbs map. But there was no such trend in the July-Aug data: so it seemed almost certain to be an admin update rather than a real trend

But: why assume, when we can check & see. Voila👇! Clearly sometime in the first wks of July, Lehigh took inactive voters off the rolls, reducing total reg'd Dems by 3% & GOP by 2%. The drop was highest in the age group that might have registered at 18 & not voted in 12 ys since

Surely your next question is: how much of the post-Dobbs net shifts in partisan registration reflect existing voters changing their party registration, as opposed to new people registering for 1st time?
Turns out: for existing voters, Dobbs doesn't look like a watershed at all🤷‍♀️

Democrats lost a net 20,000+ voters in PA in the 1st half of 2022 due to individuals changing their party reg, while the GOP gained a net 35,000. It was a disastrous 6 months for PA Dems: & even better for the GOP than Summer-Fall 2021 had been.
Then Dobbs... changed nothing😶

No really. With regard to existing voters changing their registration from one party to another in PA, Dobbs may have slightly slowed the rate at which the GOP gained converts from people previously registered as Other. But Dem losses from party switching powered forward

Notice how different this is from the 6 months after Jan 6 2021, which saw a sustained wave of existing voters switching their registration away from the GOP, some to Dem and some to Independent. It was unprecedented in recent PA history: & it didn't last

I tracked that early 2021 trend slightly obsessively (see nested threads here👇 if you dare) & the geographic patterns made clear what you'd probably expect: it is highly educated, generally wealthy, high-info voters who ever bother changing parties at all

Given that, what👇suggests to me is that for the kind of highly engaged+attuned voters who are the ones who go to the trouble of changing party registration, the possibility of a post-Roe America was pretty much already baked into their political trajectories. No earthquake here.

If you are following me #onhere you may be alot like those highly engaged voters—& you may look at the surge of disproportionately female & young voters newly registering in the wake of Dobbs & say wow! All these new pro-choice voters just like me! That would be a real misreading