A growing number of Pennsylvania Democrats are defecting to the Republican Party in the run-up to the 2024 election.
Pennsylvania has chosen the president in each of the previous four elections, but the state’s Department of State said on December 18 that more than 35,000 Democratic voters switched to Republican candidates this year. On the other side, only 15,622 Republicans who voted for Democrats in the state switched parties in 2023.
Former President Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by a razor-thin margin in 2016, defeating Hillary Clinton by a hair. When Biden won the state by 50% to 48.8% in 2020, the state swung back to the Democrats.
According to the RealClearPolitics average for their hypothetical rematch in Pennsylvania in 2024, Trump has a one-point edge over Biden. Other key battleground states where the ex-president is ahead of Biden include Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is running for reelection, making it one of the most critical Senate races in the country. The senator will almost certainly square off against Republican David McCormick in the next election for the seat that is now rated as a “Lean D,” according to The Cook Political Report.
The pollster site FiveThirtyEight has Casey, who has been in office since 2007, ahead of McCormick in the campaign, with a lead of six to fifteen points.
According to Erik Telford, senior vice president of public affairs at the Commonwealth Foundation, “President Biden and Democrats at the state and national level should be setting off alarms for current voter registration patterns and polling in Pennsylvania.”
According to state statistics, however, there are still around 500,000 more Democratic voters than Republican voters in Pennsylvania before 2024. But if the current trend holds, the Biden team has much to be concerned with.
