Chester County New Voter Registration Leans Blue

CHESTER COUNTY, PA — Democratic voter registrations in Chester County outpaced that of the Republican Party here, but Chester County is among only a handful of counties where Democrats have outpaced GOP registrations.

The Democratic Party of Chester County added 4,706 new registered voters between June and last Friday, Oct. 2. The Republican Party of Chester County gained 3,085 new registered voters in that same time.

The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 19. The last day to apply for a mail-in or civilian absentee ballot is Oct. 27.

Since June, the Democrats have only been more successful than Republicans in six of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.: Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and Sullivan. The vast majority of all their gains — some 20,000 of their 57,000 new voters since June — are in traditionally liberal Philadelphia and Montgomery counties.

Chester County Democratic Party Chair Dick Bingham said Chester County Democrats have been successful in registering new voters thanks to a few hardworking groups. The organization, Vote: All of U.S. Together, has held weekend car parades across Chester County that include voter registration. Bingham said the group recently went to Coatesville, where voter registration lags, and on Saturday registered 113 new voters.

Those registration were not of "any certain party," he said.

Bingham said that despite the recent intensive voter registration efforts by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, statewide, Democrats "still enjoy a substantial advantage."

Democrats do still comprise a significant majority of all registered voters in Pennsylvania. There are 4,150,678 registered Democrats, and 3,426,563 registered Republicans, along with 1.2 million registered independent and third party voters.

But recent GOP registrations are substantial. Since the primary back on June 2, Republicans have registered 135,619 new voters, according to the latest campaign statistics made available by the Pennsylvania Department of State. Democrats have registered less than half of that, with 57,985 new voters.

The Chester County Republican Party Chair did not respond to requests for input to this story.

Chester County's Voter Information Portal states, "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has taken notice of the tight deadline to apply for mail in and absentee ballots and is directing counties to count any ballots post marked on or before Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020 and so long as the ballot is delivered to the county no later than Friday Nov. 6, 2020."

The county advised anyone who receives their ballot close to Election Day should consider returning the completed ballot via a drop box at our Voter Services office before 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 to be sure it will be received in time to be counted."

Complete information related to voting in Chester County can be found here.

Read a related story here.

Justin Heinze contributed to this story.