Lara Putnam

No, not just an expected adjustment: from late 2022 onward, Dems were losing ground even in areas (SEPA esp, also SCPA, even Allegheny) that had been strong for them even amid regional realignment. But, this last month: areas that saw Dem growth in 2017-19 & 2022 grew once more👇

As a reminder, PA's implementation of AVR since Sept 2023 proactively asks everyone renewing their DL to reconfirm their party reg choice, which unsurprisingly has led to an increase in party-switching.
So kind of functions like a slow-rolling poll of 1/4 of much of the PA electorate yearly now?

In the 4 months between the announcement of the Dobbs decision & Nov 2022 election, Dems gained a net 9,500 voters. before that you have to go back to summer-fall 2019 to find a multi-month stretch that was net positive for Dems in PA

And by "in recent memory" I mean that Dems have not had a month with a 2,000 net gain over the GOP since the Dobbs-backlash summer of 2022 I believe?

Take this fwiw, but the last month of partisan voter registration shifts in Pennsylvania have looked better for Dems than any month in recent memory🤷‍♀️

‘It broke me’: Inside the FBI hunt for the online predators who persuaded a 13-year-old to die The suicide of a 13-year-old from Washington state set off a years-long global investigation to find an elusive online user called “White Tiger.”

Adding this new, awful, tragic reporting here. Again, the real risks now are not about what kids might see online. They're about what cameras in kids' hands allow people online to make kids do. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

worst risk was no longer What might my child see online? It's What might my child be manipulated into doing?

To themselves or others.

@jenatmartin.bsky.social & I tried to grapple with this grim new world—in which harms scale & traditional action against them cannot—here yjolt.org/everything-n...

I do understand the range of problems associated with age-verification mandates. But we need to be clear about the kind of harms underway. Once cameras connected to the internet via two-way communications platforms reached children's hands en masse, the bsky.app/profile/lara...

Sextorters are targeting young boys online — and flaunting how rich the scam is making them | CBC News There's a network of overseas scammers targeting and blackmailing teens, and in some cases driving them to suicide within hours of falling into a trap known as sextortion. CBC's Marketplace created fake social media profiles to investigate the business behind the blackmail.

More reporting on more tragedies created by smartphones with cameras in children's hands www.cbc.ca/news/marketp...

Memo: ActBlue's New AUP After 30 Days TO: ActBlue and interested partiesFROM: Haley Bash (Donor Organizer Hub) and Josh Nelson (Civic Shout)DATE: Monday, September 22, 2025RE: 30 days under ActBlue’s new Account Use Policy BACKGROUN...

Update: How is ActBlue's notional new accountability regime going? See very interesting open letter to ActBlue from Haley Bash and Josh Nelson (neither of whom is on here, I think?) docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Looks great! will read! Ty!

Butler Dems are fabulous: I am the world's biggest Catherine Lalonde fan. Dems' percent of pres vote rose there from 33.5% in '20 to 33.8% in '24: impressive, given nat'l trends. But because total votes cast in Butler grew too, Kamala's net vote total out of Butler was 2,200 votes worse than Biden

Meanwhile, shout out to ‪@mattroan.bsky.social‬ : Kamala '24 improved on Joe Biden's net votes by *955 votes* in Cumberland County, pretty much unheard of statewide. Cumberland Dems, take a bow!

So this trend highlighted by @mikemadrid.bsky.social has really important implications for Pennsylvania. That is, if it continues, and if Democrats are able to make the case to PA's Latino communities that they can be trusted with things that matter (the economy, first & foremost).

(This map is a decade old, so add like about 5 percentage points to % Hispanic population in all counties along La Ruta 222. I should find you a more recent one!)

Meanwhile relative resilience of Harris totals in Lehigh Valley came despite major declines in Latino areas of Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh.

Harris lost ground vs Biden pretty much everywhere in the US. So to me, how much of 2020 gains did Dems manage to hang onto in site of that is a useful thing to know, if you are trying to understand how much of PA's 2020 realignment is going to stick moving forward. Answer: in SEPA, most but not all

Why look at this? 2016 saw huge jump towards GOP in western PA, & rural PA in general. 2020 & 2024 continued upward for GOP, back to slower pace but fr that new elevated baseline. 2020 saw big jump for Dems in Allegheny & SEPA, plus some reclaiming of ground lost to GOP in NEPA, Lehigh Valley, SCPA

Harris lost ground vs Biden pretty much everywhere in the US. So to me, how much of 2020 gains did Dems manage to hang onto in site of that is a useful thing to know, if you are trying to understand how much of PA's 2020 realignment is going to stick moving forward. Answer: in SEPA, most but not all

re why telling: 2016 saw huge jump towards GOP in western PA, plus rural PA in general. 2020 & 2024 continued upward for GOP, back to slower pace but fr that new elevated baseline. 2020 saw big jump for Dems in Allegheny & SEPA, plus some reclaiming of ground lost to GOP in NEPA, Lehigh Valley, SCPA

Where did Kamala's net vote totals (D votes minus R votes) fall furthest from Hilary Clinton's numbers. Philly of course. The a bunch of medium or small western counties, onetime Dem strongholds, where 2016 already represented a huge Dem collapse. Turns out, still had lots more room to fall :/

In Allegheny county Harris came within 420 votes of matching Biden's net vote total. That was almost unique, nationwide, for a large & diverse county

Ok, big reveal: Allegheny, Montco, Chester, Delco, Cumberland, Dauphin, Northampton, Lancaster, Erie, Centre, & Montour counties are the only counties in PA where Kamala Harris improved on Hilary Clinton's net vote totals

interesting conjecture but no! And other than in 2016, party switching in advance of primaries doesn't look from data to be very common in PA...

ok, another hint: it's related to this chart

so: clarifying :)
These are the only counties that share this characteristic. It's not voter reg. it's about election results. Specifically, *net* Dem votes—hence, related to both vote choice & turnout.
It shows change over time. & it's not trivial: it's genuinely important looking ahead, imho.
??

Apparently my hints & guidance have not been helpful? 🤷‍♀️
bsky.app/profile/prag...

update: here's that list, fwiw. largely just reflects size of population, but Dauphin, York, and Lehigh did see higher rates of growth of Independent+Other registrants...

no but because I so appreciate the specificity of that guess I am going to pop over and generate that actually ranking for you (at a guess, Philly, not Allegheny, should top it?)

Nope! excellent guess but no, unrelated to mail in ballots!