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In other words, it jumped from about 0.5% to 1.5%.
How did you get the exact right answer?
There are 3.9 million Democratic-registered voters in PA, compared to 3.6 million Republicans, and 61,126 of them switched their registration to Republican this year. That's 1.5%. It came from 0.9%, not 0.5%, but your ending answer was spot-on.
I can't for the life of me figure out where Newsweek got the 103% increase, since it was 36,341 voters switching to Republican last year, and 61,126 isn't a 103% increase over that. It is, as Newsweek notes, "nearly twice," which is incompatible with 103%, so maybe they are just making up random numbers. I don't know.
I could also, as a separate way of illustrating how totally worthless this whole article is, total up the people who switched their registration from Republican to Democratic in 2023, and in 2024, and measure how much the number went up by, since it wasn't an election year last year and so obviously the numbers are going to go up in the year where it matters. But what would be the point? I don't want to do that, because I'm not a partisan hack trying to make a disingenuous point.
Source: https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dos/resources/voting-and-elections/voting-and-election-statistics/currentvotestats.xls
Edit: @revelrous@sopuli.xyz figured it out. I needed to include the "other" affliliations, not just R and D. I could redo the math to see if it adds up to 103% that way, but as I mentioned, the whole comparison is useless and dishonest anyway, even with the right numbers, so why bother?
You're only looking at people who flip from D to R. The article is talking about all people who left D, including to "other".
"In 2023, 19,321 Pennsylvania voters changed their registration from Democrat to "other," and 36,341 switched from Democrat to Republican. Overall, 55,662 registered Democrats in the state left the party."
"This year, the state-released data shows that 51,937 registered Democrats changed their affiliation to "other," and 61,126 switched to Republican, for a total of 113,063 leaving the party."
113,063 / 55,662 = 2.0312
which is a 103% increase.
And people claiming this is insignificant compared to the total 6 million+ voters in PA should keep in mind that margins in PA are very close. Biden only won PA by 80,555 votes in 2020, so changes in the 100k range are absolutely significant.
Read the last paragraph of my message.
I see. why do you consider it useless and dishonest?
Because they're comparing the number of people who changed their registration in 2023 to the number in 2024, and implying a conclusion from the fact that the number went up that is anything other than "2024 is an election year so it actually matters what people are registered as, so of course the number will go up."
fair enough. The article also compared it to the opposite movement, as in the people who left the Republican Party between 2023 and 2024:
"This year, 48,702 Republicans switched parties, with 24,046 changing to "other" and 24,656 becoming Democrats, around a 67 percent increase in Republicans leaving the party."
So I guess that makes the headline a little less concerning, but the difference still seems like something to worry about.
My intent was to point out how ridiculous the "103% increase" line is, not to suggest the comparison was valid in the first place.
It's all good. I was only surprised that you seemed to have arrived at exactly the answer, clearly just by making up numbers to make a point. I was trying to agree with you and add a little data.
Thank you, friend! :)
considering the margin of victory in 2020 was 1.17%, that is pretty concerning.