Democrats continue outpacing GOP in Pennsylvania

By Derrick Nunnally
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

In the two months since Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, Democrats have added more voters than Republicans in all but five of the state's 67 counties and increased their statewide lead by 40,566 voters by the end of last week.

Republicans have lost nearly 1,500 registered voters since the primary.

The trend is especially pronounced in Philadelphia's suburbs, where Democratic leads acquired in Montgomery and Bucks Counties in the primary season have already grown. In Montgomery County, Democratic Commissioner Joseph M. Hoeffel III reacted with some glee to numbers that showed his party had increased its advantage from 10,001 voters on April 22 to 13,784 as of yesterday.

"It should humble some of the braggarts of the Republican Party," he said, "and confirm that the county is changing."

The continuing Democratic groundswell appears to challenge the notion that the primary voter rolls were distorted by Republican stalwarts who made a temporary switch to affect the Democratic outcome. If Republicans who crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary are returning to the fold, their numbers appear to be subsumed by Democratic gains.

"That's part of the long-term trend," Chris Borick, a professor of political science at Muhlenberg University, said of the post-primary Democratic registrations. "The primaries were, if you look at it, a peak or a little bit of a spike, but they weren't some kind of outlier event."

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