With Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline now passed, Democrats have demonstrated a clear advantage over Republicans when it comes to registering new voters, indicating a strong position for that party leading into the highly consequential midterm elections.
As of Oct. 19, the deadline to register to vote in the commonwealth, Democrats netted an additional 5,081 voters in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, while Republicans lost 14 voters since the beginning of 2026. Unaffiliated and third-party voters saw a 3,698 increase.
Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District includes all of Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties and part of Monroe County. Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, running for a second term, faces a challenge from former firefighter Bob Brooks. The district is considered one of the most competitive in the country, and one of the handful that will determine which party takes control of the House of Representatives next year.
The voter registration trend in the district mirrors that of the state, where Republicans lost 5,341 net voters while Democrats gained 64,199 statewide since January 2026.
The voter registration numbers could spell trouble for Republicans in November, especially because polling puts them at a disadvantage. In the Lehigh Valley, voters favor Brooks over Mackenzie by a five-point margin, and 73% say they disapprove of Donald Trump’s performance in office, according to a Franklin & Marshall poll published in September.
“We are really excited about this, we think that all signs are pointing to a really good turnout for Democrats, or they wouldn’t be signing up. … That’s the energy on the ground,” said Lori McFarland, chair of the Lehigh County Democratic party.
McFarland said volunteers have already knocked on 56,000 doors in the Lehigh Valley to promote Democratic candidates, and more on-the-ground outreach is planned in the final two-week stretch before the midterms.
However, with the growth in third-party and unaffiliated voters, both parties also need the support of people who do not necessarily align with either Democrats or Republicans. McFarland said county Democrats have made an effort to reach out to unaffiliated voters this election cycle, including by highlighting Democratic officials’ efforts to open Pennsylvania’s primary elections to third-party and unaffiliated voters.
On the other hand, Republicans said they are focused on turning out voters who are already registered with the party, and are not reading closely into the voter registration results. Even though the 2026 voter registration trends favor Democrats, Republicans have been registering voters at a faster rate than Democrats since 2008, according to statewide data.
“Quite frankly, those trends are interesting but I don’t really get too wrapped up about number changes, when you look at the fact that Pennsylvania, for many, many years of my lifetime, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by over a million statewide, and continued to have hundreds of thousands of more registered voters, even in years where Richard Nixon won, George Bush won, Ronald Reagan won,” said Glenn Geissinger, chair of the Northampton County Republicans.
George Rivera, chair of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, also said that GOP members are focused on turning out Republican voters and highlighting popular tax reforms under the Trump administration, like no tax on Social Security and overtime pay.
But Rivera acknowledged that the party has put more effort into turning out Republican voters than registering new ones in past election cycles.
“As a newly elected chair moving forward, we are going to do things a lot differently,” Rivera said. “We invested a lot of resources on getting people out to vote, a lot of our budget spent on that, and very little on voter registration.”
He said his goal is to reach 90,000 Republican voters in Lehigh County before the 2028 presidential election.
Though Democrats have an advantage in voter registration and polling, Republicans are benefiting from huge amounts of cash from Elon Musk and Trump, who have already poured a combined $600 million into critical races in support of GOP candidates.
The House Majority PAC, a pro-Democratic committee, on the other hand, has committed $3.6 million into advertising that backs Brooks and attacks Mackenzie.
According to recent campaign finance reports, although Brooks’ campaign out-raised Mackenzie’s in the fiscal third quarter, Mackenzie has a larger campaign war chest than his Democratic counterpart: Brooks had $1.3 million cash on hand, and Mackenzie had a $2.2 million balance as of the end of September.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.