PA Voter Registration Analysis November 5 2009

Filed under Obama, Pa Dems, Pa GOP, Pennsylvania, Politics, Tea Party by Joe Collins | 2 comments / trackbacks

Several weeks ago when Alex pointed us numbers nerds at the Pennsylvania voter registration data, I figured there would be some indication of withdrawal from Obamunism and movement in favor of the GOP.  When I was recently sans-internet for a couple of hours I plowed into the numbers and found little to be pleased with.  Given approximately one year of data, long story short:

  • Voters don’t care about the Republican party per se,
  • The spring tea party time period shows some limited movement towards the GOP, but…
  • The late-spring/early-summer period counteracted all of that move (and then some),
  • We got no additional boost from summer town-halls and July 4 tea parties,
  • Sweeping the independent and Libertarian vote will be necessary for GOP electoral success for the foreseeable future.

(Graphics and more commentary below the fold)

Specifically, I looked at new voter applications and party change applications.

First, new voter applications.  New registrations of Republicans are almost lockstep with new registrations of “Other”.

New_Voter_Apps_by_Party

Then I looked at ratios of registrations.  The blue line represents the ratio of non-Democrat registration to Democrat registrations.  The glimmer of hope here is that the trend is generally above 1:1 (but just barely), so Democrats will be held somewhat accountable to a coalition of Republicans and independents.  The yellow line is the ratio of Republican registrations to Libertarians plus “Others”.  Aside from a GOP bump roughly coincident with the April tea parties, the GOP is doing little more than treading water against third party and independent voters.

New_Voter_Apps_Ratios

Ok, so those are new, young, motor-voter registrations. Surely some people switched parties, no?

Raw numbers of Party Change Applications:

Party_Change_Apps_Raw

Ratios of Party Change Applications:

Party_Change_App_Ratio2

The red line is the ratio of Republican to Democrat party switchers.  The thin black line is the total volume of applications.

Again, we see the reaction to the porkulus, mega-budget, etc, culminating in the April tea parties, which got us over the 1:1 ratio very briefly. Unfortunately, there is a post-tea party counter move on even higher application volume.  My hypothesis is that the tea parties were more emotive than persuasive, but it’s clear that voters will react to irresponsible behavior in Washington.

 

Possibly Related...

 

Comments, compliments or complaints?

Email Joe Collins, Join the other 2 commenters or Share This...

2 comments or trackbacks

  1. Nathan Benefield Nov 5

    Joe,

    Thanks, I enjoy good graphs of the data. However, I’m not sure I expected voter registration to tell us much.

    I think if you look back at 2008, the big shift was mostly new registration for Democrats, inspired by Obama or a hotly contested primary race.

    I’m not sure what would have inspired folks to switch parties (or unregistered voters to register) to the GOP in 2009? The white hot Supreme Court primary between Orie Melvin, what’s her name, and what’s his name? Even if we’re looking ahead to the 2010 elections, the Democratic primaries for US Senate and Governor seem likely to be tighter races.

  2. Joe Collins Nov 5

    Might have expected a bigger surge for independents, if not one for the Republicans. Anything to take a dent out of the D’s. It was quite a tumultuous year, and (like the 1983 “V”, if not the 2009 “V”) the gradual realization that we’re being screwed might have shown up. Even still, the tail end of the party switcher ratio is creeping towards 1:1.