Some more good news out of Pennsylvania on the Democratic Party registration front.
Democratic Party enrollment surged past the 4 million mark Monday, setting a state record on the last day Pennsylvanians had to register to vote in next month's presidential primary. [...]Since last year's election, which featured races for judicial and municipal offices, the number of Democrats increased by more than 161,000, or more than 4 percent, to at least 4,044,952. No political party in the state had previously reached the 4 million threshold.
Registration in the GOP declined by about 1 percent, to 3,215,478 statewide.
On The Stephanie Miller Show this morning there was much concern trolling about Rush Limbaugh's campaign to switch Republicans over to the Democratic Party for Hillary, further advancing this idea among Obama supporters that if voters switch parties to vote for Hillary it's out of sinister party-destroying motives but if they switch for Barack it's out of the goodness and pureness of their heart. This assumption ignores a couple things. First of all is the fact that, no matter how it may make Obama supporters' heads explode, some Republicans actually do genuinely prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
It is not easy to tell how many of the new Democrats came from the GOP, but recent random interviews with some of them suggested that the defectors have individual reasons for their decisions.One is Ellen Weese, of Strafford, a longtime Republican who joined her husband in the Democratic Party this year. The couple have been working together as Obama campaign volunteers to register new voters in Delaware County.
"I was no longer feeling like a Republican," she said.
Peggy Conrad, a grandmother whose Upper Merion Township home straddles the Chester-Montgomery county line, also switched from Republican to Democrat.
"I feel strongly I want to vote Democratic this time," she said, adding that she likes both candidates, but intends to vote for Clinton.
"My gut is that maybe she has more experience dealing with Washington the way it is," she said.
Secondly, according to exit polls of Ohio and Texas, Obama and Clinton actually split independents in those two states, so this idea that Obama enjoys an inherent advantage among independents may actually be an outmoded paradigm, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, which has a general pre-disposition toward Clinton.
That's not to say, though, that Eric Kleefeld is wrong when he posits that the crossovers likely portend good news for Obama. Pennsylvania is different than Ohio and Texas in that it is a closed primary so one had to have switched party registration a month prior to election day (i.e. yesterday) and it does appear it was the Obama campaign that had a more concerted on the ground effort to recruit party switchers. From First Read:
At 4:30 p.m. Monday, as the doors to Chester County Voter Services automatically clicked shut, several people pleaded for entry, to register to vote for the primary. Election officials across the state said they had never seen a rush like what occurred over the weekend. Obama campaign aides were at the Voter Services door, ready to give those shut out alternative suggestions to register in time.
No matter how the party switchers shake out in their support on April 22, I love the fact that the GOP is already trying to figure out how to win those voters back in November.
Gleason said the GOP will work hard to persuade party-switchers to return to the fold and help elect Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. He said that will include telephone canvassing, mailings and even handing out voter-registration forms at some polls on primary day, April 22."We know everybody who switched," he said. "When this (primary) election is over, we're going after those people. We're going to get them back."
Not sure if the threatening tone is really the way to go, but, alas, what else do they have, really, when McCain's the nominee.
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