The liberal media couldn't contain its excitement over the latest Franklin & Marshall poll showing Biden with a 10-point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania. Newsweek, for example, published an article headlined, "Joe Biden Crushes Donald Trump in New Swing State Poll."
"A new poll shows President Joe Biden holding a double-digit lead over former President Donald Trump in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania seven months before the general election," the article began. "This marks a large increase since February, when the company's polling showed Biden leading Trump by only one percentage point, on 43 percent to 42 percent."
Can anyone point to anything that has happened between these two points that could possibly explain such a dramatic shift in Franklin & Marshall's polling? I certainly can't. Honestly, there are several reasons why this poll screams "Outlier!", but the liberal media got the narrative that it wanted out of it.
However, a subsequent Wall Street Journal poll with a larger sample and a smaller margin of error not only showed Trump ahead by three points in Pennsylvania but showed him leading in all battleground states, save for Wisconsin, which was tied.
But hey, let's just focus on the polls that look good for Biden, right? Those are the only ones that are worth making a fuss about.
I guess we just let them.
Now, back to Pennsylvania. While liberals are being lulled into a state of calm over the results of one poll, they may be missing something very important. According to an analysis by Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner, Democrats ought to be very concerned about voter registration trends in the Keystone State. Particularly with voters in former coal country who have traditionally been Democrats finally changing their registration to Republican.
Important to note: These voters have not changed personally, but their parties have done so. Democrats have abandoned their working-class voters for college-educated elites who rarely call the middle of somewhere home.
Officials in both parties in Washington — whether they are lawmakers on Capitol Hill or strategists working for one of the alphabet soup campaign arms of the House, Senate, or state legislatures, or a staffer for any of them — often struggle with how to appeal to these citizens.
Democrats did appeal to them well for so long … until they didn’t. It was an erosion that wasn’t all that easily detected because what didn’t move in a significant way was the voter registration numbers. Part of why voters who left the Democratic Party did not change their voter registration had to do with local elections and the state’s closed primary system.
Because Republicans had been in the wilderness for so long in local mayoral and county row office races — Democrats had held control of these seats since the rise of the New Deal Democrat coalition — people held on to their Democrat registration because most races were decided in primaries because only Democrats ran.
So what changed? Initially, some who disagreed with certain Democratic policies still kept their party registration. But after economic issues like burdensome regulations and higher taxes started to really cause financial pain, they felt the need to fully switch sides.
Then, social issues like gender ideology and open borders pushed them even further away. And then there was Gov. Josh Shapiro's (D-Pa.) unilateral move to implement automatic voter registration when getting driver’s licenses or ID cards, which was the final straw for many, prompting them to leave the Democratic Party.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Despite Republican lawmakers bellyaching about Shapiro’s move, in the first month alone, 3,194 Democrats, 4,052 independents, and a whopping 7,657 Republicans have registered.
If you are doing the math, as many Republicans registered in the state as Democrats and independents together, and even independent registration outpaced the Democrats by nearly 900.
In July of last year, Democrats held a 480,000 voter registration advantage over Republicans, but by Oct. 10, that margin had fallen to 446,467. And the trend has continued in the six months since then.
Indeed, if you go back to the day President Joe Biden won this state in November 2020, Democratic voter registration has gone from over 600,000 voter registration advantage to a 389,000 registration advantage, according to the newest numbers released by the Pennsylvania Department of State.
There is still quite a bit of time left before the election, and if these trends continue, Democrats in Pennsylvania are going to be in real trouble.
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