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.
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?
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.
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?
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! :)