“About 19,000 Pennsylvanians have left the Republican Party since Jan 6. That’s a drop in the bucket for a state with more than 8.8 million registered voters, and almost 3.5 million Republicans. But it’s also an unusually high rate of defections: Almost two-thirds of the voters who have switched parties this year left the GOP, compared with a third or less typically. And there are signs of a broader political shift underway” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“These are often longtime party loyalists, highly engaged voters who cast Republican primary ballots in low-profile, off-year elections, according to an Inquirer analysis of voter registration data. They haven’t changed their political ideologies, they said in interviews. But they’re registering as third-party or independent voters because they believe that their political home, now led by Trump, has changed around them. That raises the prospect of a Republican primary electorate even friendlier to Trump and Trump-allied candidates – something that could have big implications for the party in competitive races for governor and U.S. Senate next year.”