Record Pa. voter registration pads Dems' edge

updated 5:10 p.m. ET Oct. 7, 2008

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Democratic registration has surged by 13 percent and Republican ranks have shrunk by 1 percent as a record 8.6 million people in battleground Pennsylvania registered to vote in the presidential election.

Last-minute registrations on Monday's deadline still have to be counted, but the total released by Pennsylvania's State Department already far exceeds the previous record of 8.4 million set in 2004.

Democrats saw an increase of more than 500,000 new voters in the past year. Republicans watched their ranks shrink by about 28,000.

Statewide, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1,170,000 voters. The margin a year ago was about 638,000.

There are at least 4,387,027 Democrats, 3,217,464 Republicans and 995,022 independents and members of minor political parties.

The new Democratic registrations came largely as a result of intense recruiting by Democratic nominee Barack Obama during his battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state's April primary and, since then, in the general-election campaign against GOP nominee John McCain.

Some political observers cautioned Tuesday that the burgeoning Democratic rolls are no guarantee Obama will defeat McCain in the contest for Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes.

Thomas Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes University, noted that many of the registrants recruited by Obama's campaign are college students and other young people. He said new voters, and especially young ones, are less likely than older, established voters to head to the polls on Election Day, Nov. 4.

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"He needs to turn those numbers into votes," Baldino said.

Terry Madonna, a professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College, said the registration trend clearly reflects enthusiasm among Obama's supporters, but that "more than a fair number of these people aren't going to vote."

Still, even if only a fraction of the newly registered Democrats show up at the polls, he said it would be "a potentially huge plus" for Obama.

Leslie Amoros, a spokeswoman for the Department of State, said final totals are not expected before late October because the state's 67 counties need time to process the crush of registrations filed close to the deadline.

Final numbers were available Tuesday in Philadelphia, the state's largest city and hub of the state Democratic Party. They showed Democratic enrollment growing by an above-average 14 percent to nearly 855,000 in the past year, while the GOP's ranks shrank by nearly 4 percent to about 145,000.

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