175,000 Pennsylvania Democrats Who Didn’t Vote In 2016 Request Ballots In 2020

Democrats are building an enormous early voting lead, and in Pennsylvania, Democrats who didn’t show up in 2016 are requesting ballots in 2020.

Politico reported:

The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Democrats have a roughly three-to-one advantage over Republicans in absentee ballot requests. In Florida — a must-win for President Donald Trump — the Democratic lead stands at more than 700,000 ballot requests, while the party also leads in New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.

Even more concerning for Republicans, Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 are requesting 2020 ballots at higher rates than their GOP counterparts. The most striking example is Pennsylvania, where nearly 175,000 Democrats who sat out the last race have requested ballots, more than double the number of Republicans, according to an analysis of voter rolls by the Democratic firm TargetSmart.

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The expansion of absentee voting in Pennsylvania was put in place before the pandemic, and Democrats in the state have been the infrastructure to turn out their vote before Trump started suing every county in the state to block mail-in voting.

Republicans are not only going to have to try to get their in-person vote out in the middle of a pandemic, but Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting have “screwed” the GOP and may cost them the election according to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

None of this is a done deal until the ballots are counted, but Democrats are building a massive early voting lead that if the ballots are delivered on time and counted could be too much for Trump and his party to overcome on Election Day.

Democrats have the enthusiasm. They just need to make sure they deliver the votes.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association