Finally, a few people are beginning to recognize what the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been doing for the last four years: registering voters. A new Politico piece points out that while the polls tell one story . . . wait for it . . . “there’s a more tangible piece of data. . . that tells a different story.” Now you, my reader friends, this is nothing new. I’ve said it in every single column. Polls vs. reality. “Biden up 9 in Michigan,” vs. Trump with thousands (during a lock-down) in an airplane hangar. Then there is Pennsylvania.
This is, quite frankly, the presidency, though I will be enormously disappointed and you can condemn me as wrong if Trump doesn’t achieve two milestones: getting a higher electoral vote total than in 2016, and winning the popular vote. But when it comes to simply winning the presidency, the Keystone State is it this cycle.
You see, as best I can tell, Trump already has the Eastern triumvirate of Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. Yesterday, Richard Baris of Big Data Poll said that both Florida and North Carolina were in Trump’s column. The former came as a real shock to the Hoax News Pollsters why had been portraying the Sunshine State as “close.” But polling (yes, polling) last week showed Trump doing exceptionally well with Hispanics, and all the data manipulation the pollsters could do with “alienated seniors” didn’t seem to work. 
Meanwhile, they missed the real key, as usual, which was Republicans out-registering Democrats last month in Miami-Dade County. For the past two months, I’ve been posting Florida county updates on my Twitter page (@LarrySchweikart) and the upshot is this: red counties are doing even better than in 2016, but even in blue counties, the sheer size of GOP registrations is impressive. (Note that Joe Biden, who “is doing well with seniors,” they keep telling us, is not even running ads in Florida). And today, the Eleventh Circuit Court reversed an injunction entered by a district judge that allowed Florida felons to vote who hadn’t paid the fines that was part of their sentences. This removes yet another 50,000 or so likely Biden Florida voters.
North Carolina has also seen massive GOP registration gains. Democrat activists are trying to hoist the “early vote” flag there, but longtime ballot analyst “Ravi” from www.freerepublic.com thinks this is pure cannibalization of election day votes. “Wait until October 15 when in-person early voting starts and then you’ll see the red tide,” he wrote to me. “Mark my words. Overall voter registration changes from 2016 to 2020 will soon become apparent.” He was referring to the Red Team 2.13 million voters there. Every week in North Carolina Republicans reduce the Democrat registration advantage by 3,000. In 2016—when Trump won the Tar Heel State by 173,000 votes—Republicans have slashed 230,000 off the Democrats’ statewide lead! Once again, Trump will win North Carolina by more than he did in 2016, just as will be the case in Florida, where he should win by a quarter-million votes.
Ohio is non-competitive. As I have mentioned in previous columns, an internal study that allocated virtually every independent in Ohio by previous 20-year voting history left the Republicans there with a 300,000 advantage . . . in a state Trump won by 8.9 points. Again, Ohio will have a bigger margin this year than in 2016 for Trump.
That returns us to Pennsylvania, where the Republicans are “knocking on doors and registering voters in person,” according to Politico. Voter-registration wizards like Scott Presler have been on the ground in Pennsylvania and has vowed to stay there for a month.
I registered 24 new Republican voters today. The best part is when they say they'll never vote Blue again! #VoteRed
Also, Michael Burkes, who goes by the name 'Trump's Black Grandson," is another powerful force traveling the country registering up to a hundred people a day as Republicans.
Worse, not only has Biden’s team not gone door-to-door (odd how these goofball medical theories come back to bite you in the butt) but now they are finally admitting that “It’s particularly difficult to register college students due to the pandemic.” Well. I think someone mentioned that back in July here at uncoverdc.com.
People registar to vote during a Republican voter registration in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on September 5, 2020. - Less than two months before the November 3 presidential election, the contrast between Republicans and Democrats is striking in Washington County, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
And that problem is national, and it’s only getting worse. One mother of a student at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, told me that her son, a sophomore, had left campus because as soon as a few students in a dorm tested positive, ASU locked down the dorm and they were trapped for two weeks. Other campuses nationwide are facing the same issue. If Democrats think registering students is tough, wait till you try to mobilize and organize them to vote on Nov. 3.
As Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina increasingly seem in good shape for President Trump, the action now shifts to the “pickup” states of Minnesota and Nevada, as well as to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona (which some think is closer than I do). We will tour some of the other states in the next column.
Larry Schweikart is the co-author with Michael Allen of the New York Times #1 bestseller A Patriot’s History of the United States, author of Reagan: The American President, and founder of the Wild World of History curriculum website with complete US and World History courses for grades 9-12 that include teacher guides, student workbooks, tests/answer keys, maps/graphs/images, and video lessons for all units (www.wildworldofhistory.com).
