Many have said that Centre County's voter trends have moved leftward as of late, and that is very true. Thanks in part to a majority of Democrat registering in the State College Borough and at Penn State University Park. With Demographic changes the county is changing more so with Patton, College, and Ferguson Twp's trending left, while rural Twps and Boroughs such as Millheim, Liberty, and Benner continuing their surges to the right. However, since 2012 I would argue that like the state of Colorado, Centre County has taken a dramatic shift from Tilt Democratic stance back to its purple undecided stance. Voter Registration is the main cause, Republicans and Democrats have both been losing their numbers, but Republicans are continuing to bounce back. Although Corbett is truly the sitting duck of all ducks this election cycle Centre County won't be voting for Corbett come 2016. And many here are seeing that even with an unpopular Republican Governor, Republicans are still making gains in voter registration. Evidence of this can be seen in the voter registration tallies from 2012 to the present.
Democrats Non-Affiliated Republican All Voters Dec. 2012 46754/41.43% 19852/17.59% 42991/38.10% 112844 Jan. 2013 46469/41.36% 19748/17.58% 42890/38.17% 112354 Feb. 2013 44577/41.17% 18828/17.39% 41814/38.61% 108287 Mar. 2013 44525/41.15% 18791/17.37% 41769/38.60% 108210 Apr. 2013 44417/41.11% 18779/17.38% 41715/38.61% 108043 May 2013 44329/41.08% 18753/17.38% 41693/38.64% 107903 Jun. 2013 44361/41.09% 18777/17.39% 41699/38.62% 107964 Jul. 2013 44334/41.08% 18781/17.40% 41668/38.61% 107919 Aug. 2013 44224/41.04% 18749/17.40% 41637/38.64% 107759 Sep. 2013 44168/41.00% 18759/17.41% 41632/38.65% 107719 Oct. 2013 44000/40.98% 18669/17.39% 41549/38.69% 107549 Nov. 2013 43999/40.91% 18713/17.40% 41654/38.73% 107549 Dec. 2013 43995/40.90% 18722/17.40% 41664/38.73% 107568 Jan. 2014 43948/40.87% 18723/17.41% 41653/38.74% 107532 Feb. 2014 43902/40.86% 18709/17.41% 41628/38.74% 107451 Mar. 2014 43854/40.86% 18661/17.39% 41593/38.76% 107320 Apr. 2014 43814/40.86% 18636/17.38% 41557/38.76% 107228 May 2014 43829/40.85% 18662/17.39% 41576/38.75% 107298 Jun. 2014 43806/40.84% 18683/17.42% 41546/38.73% 107271 Present 43837/40.81% 18728/17.44% 41600/38.73% 107413
As you can see the GOP has closed the percentage gap and the raw voter number, although one reason that this trend has happened is because college students are being knocked off the rolls it is important to note that this happens every year. Also this did not happen between 2008-2010, the GOP wave year. So this along with some GOP Research data that I cannot share for specific reasons prove that the winds in Centre county are changing and that the region is starting to truck back to the middle. Not only that, but Don Steyer's registration program is having bad effect for Democrats, because so far it has managed to registered more Republicans than Democrats or Independents. So we will have to see, perhaps Democrats will begin to outpace the GOP again once Steyer's registration project for LCV is complete, but so far it is off to a rough start....
As you can see, Centre County still has some blue dog left in its Northern and Western corners of the County in early 2013. The big blue dot in the middle is the Democratic safe haven of State College, PA and Penn State University. But even that with registration numbers has broken even with the GOP managing to score registration leads in some of the surrounding townships of the Centre Region. Although they are not able to nullify the entire Centre Region's Democratic Lean they do well enough to keep Republicans very close to Democrats in Registration in this key Pennsylvania County.
However, by 2014 we start to see a change. Some of the former blue dog precincts are beginning to shift, all of them are actually shifting to Republicans and are outpacing registration numbers. As of this moment Democrats have not been able to pickup any precincts, they were coming close in a College Twp. precinct however, last I have checked. Also I want to apologize, Bellefonte Borough South should have been blue, I don't know what happened.
All in all the GOP is likely to bring the county within a 2000 registration gap soon, at least that is what I am projecting.
