Kyle Sammin: How Lancaster fell
When Republican Ryan Aument ran for the state Senate in 2018, he won by 33 percentage points. In 2022, he was unopposed. But when he resigned at the end of 2024 to work for U.S. Senator Dave McCormick, his former seat flipped to a Democrat, James Malone, by a narrow margin of 482 votes.
How did this happen? Does it suggest larger changes in the Pennsylvania electorate? And will Malone be able to hold the seat when it comes up for election again in 2026?
The first question many are asking is: is the 36th Senate District a Republican district or not? The short answer is: it is, except once in a while when it isn’t.
As the map below shows, Donald Trump won this district easily less than six months ago with a fifteen-point margin of victory (56.89 percent to Kamala Harris’s 41.58 percent.) The county as a whole has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.
Sounds like a solidly Republican district, right? Other elections follow the same pattern. In 2020, Republican candidates for Attorney general, Treasurer, and Auditor General all won SD-36 easily, with margins of 19.04 percent, 24.04 percent, and 23.22 percent over their Democratic opponents. And even as he was losing statewide, 2022 Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz won this district by thirteen percentage points — 55.5 to 42.2.
But at that same election, Democrat Josh Shapiro carried SD-36 by two-tenths of a percentage point — 49.2 to 49.0. This margin, similar to the 50.0 to 49.1 percent Democratic win this week, shows that the voters of northern Lancaster County are Republican, but that their party loyalty has its limits.
Comparing the maps of Shapiro’s 2022 victory with Malone’s 2025 win show a pretty similar shift in the vote.
In 2022, the consensus on why Democrats performed so well statewide was that Republicans ran flawed candidates. Trump lost the state in 2020, but Oz did worse than him in 66 out of 67 counties, including Lancaster. The Republican gubernatorial nominee, Doug Mastriano, did worse still, underperforming both Oz and Trump’s 2020 numbers in every county.
Was Josh Parsons, the Republican nominee in the special election, as unpopular in Lancaster County in 2025 as Doug Mastriano was in 2022? Or, to put it another way, was James Malone as popular as Josh Shapiro?
No. It’s worth noting that Parsons won a countywide election as commissioner less than two years ago — a low turnout, off-year election in which people mostly voted for the party with which they are registered.
The Parsons campaign must take responsibility for some of the slippage in the GOP vote. As my colleague Steve Ulrich noted yesterday at PoliticsPA, Parsons “has been a polarizing figure, not only among Democrats in Lancaster County, but also among more moderate Republicans.”
Still, if it was just about the candidate, the Republican would have carried the day on Tuesday.
We have to consider, as always, the thermostatic nature of elections; that is, the habit voters have of voting more heavily for the party that is not holding the White House, even in races that have nothing to do with the federal government. That is just part of the nature of modern politics, it seems: we are more inspired to vote against someone than for someone. For disappointed Democrats and left-leaning independents, this was the first chance to vote against Trump.
That brings us to turnout. It’s a cliché to say “it will all come down to turnout,” but of course that is a factor in any election. Turnout was down between 56 and 73 percent across the district, which is what you’d expect between a presidential election and a special election to the state legislature. But precisely how much turnout fell did not correlate with how much a municipality shifted toward the Democrats.
We don’t yet know from the election results who turned out, only that there were fewer of them. But it is clear from the data that one of two things happened: either the people of northern Lancaster County became fifteen percent more Democratic since November, or Democrats did a better job of turning out their people than Republicans.
It’s pretty clear that it’s the latter.
That’s important because it sends a message about how future campaigns in this state must be conducted. A generation ago, Republicans had a big advantage on high-propensity voters — the kind of people who never miss an election or a primary, year in and year out. Democrats had more of the every-four-years voter who only turns out for the big ones.
That’s flipped, another consequence of the party shift that has swept the nation since Trump came down the escalator in 2015 and announced he was running for President. He has brought many occasional voters and non-voters into the Republican Party, and they turned out big for him in 2024. But the state GOP cannot assume that a new Trump voter is necessarily a new regular Republican voter. Maybe they just like him. Maybe they like the party, but need to be reminded because they are not really obsessed with politics the way plenty of other people (this author included) are.
This was a problem for Democrats in the past, but they built around it. Campaigns worked on turnout, as did friendly labor unions and black churches. All of the constant “get out and vote” advertising that seemed stupid to a regular voter helped Democrats break through the noise of daily life and remind those sometimes-voters it was time to do their civic duty.
If the Republican Party wants to keep winning with Trump’s coalition, they must do the same. “Rock the vote” messaging was never aimed at the GOP voter, but it should be now. Trump’s campaign knew this, which is why they went from 2020’s hostility to mail-in voting to 2024’s “too big to rig” embrace of it. The result was the first popular vote majority for the party in twenty years, and a thumping electoral college win.
Pennsylvania Republicans: learn from this.
Turning out the voters is hard work. It takes volunteers knocking on doors, driving folks to the polls, telling them how to get mail ballots delivered safely and legally, and all of the things the Dems have known for a while now. Party machines are dying everywhere, so PACs and various other NGOs have stepped into the breach, but no matter who’s doing it, it has to be done for a party that wants to win in the 21st century.
Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party is a basic mess. It has nominated flawed candidates – yes. However, it has not embraced the basic tenet that turnout matters. Scott Pressler pushed the Republican turnout in the presidential election, not the state party. The state party totally writes off the areas that have been traditionally blue instead of trying to win the votes of the folks in those districts who are open to considering a decent republican candidate. In the areas where the party has a lock on the electorate – it takes them for granted as is shown in this special election.
I’ve been doing mail in balloting for years. In PA you have to request a mail in ballot via mail to get one. I have friends who only want to vote in person on election day. That’s fine as long as they vote. The off year elections usually have low turnout which is where the local reps really have to get the voters to the polls. The mid terms deserve an added push to get voters to the polls.
Great analysis. It’s writing like this that will put B & L on the map. Congratulations.
I grew up in East Fallowfield Township in Chester County. Growing up, Chester County was solid Republican. Sometime around Obama it turned Blue. Chester County has the highest per cap amongst PA Counties at $119K. As counties become more affluent, they become bluer for two reasons. First, wealth creates leisure (see Veblen). You can’t think if you have to work. You have to have free time to think. Second, even though wealth and leisure gives us more time to think, wealth and leisure are no guarantee that we think well. Too much leisure creates affluenza: an affliction that makes us hate ourselves for being successful. We become Democrats and give everything away. As T.E. Lawrence said, “I liked the things underneath me and took my pleasures and adventures downward. There seemed a certainty in degradation, a final safety. Man could rise to any height, but there was an animal level beneath which he could not fall. It was a satisfaction on which to rest. There is certainty in degradation” (Seven Pillars…).
An overconfident Republican candidate coupled with an overconfident Lancaster GOP organization that did little or no field work to boost the Republican special election turnout caused this defeat. It is an important wake up call for all of us Republican volunteer field people. Special elections are determined mostly by the efforts of the local Party Organizations’ District Leaders and Committee people. Obviously, County Commissioner Josh Parsons did not inspire much of an effort by the Lancaster GOP District Leaders and Republican Committee people which was the cause of his defeat in SD 36. It did not help afterwards that the Lancaster Chair blamed the Lancaster County Republican voters for our stunning defeat in SD 36 instead of our organizational failures last Tuesday. Our new Pennsylvania GOP currently has many more low propensity voters than in the past. Calling on our Republican Voters in person or at least by telephone before any election and turning them out takes on a much greater importance now. This is especially in any special election than it was in past. We must wake up to our new reality under to avoid defeat in future low turnout elections.
Charlie, Parsons is not likable. You aren’t going to get a rural white male voter out to the polling place when they don’t like their conservative candidates.
Here is a post on my FB from a former supervisor in Donegal Twp.: I’ll agree my friend as to [not] opening up the primaries!! RED lost the 36th Senate for the next 1 1/2 years only, as we did not have the right candidate, republicans are finally opening their eyes up and this special election, they were not in agreement to sending Parson’s to that senate seat, at least that’s what I’m hearing in the loops that I travel! 😉
I found these sentences interesting:
“That’s flipped, another consequence of the party shift that has swept the nation since Trump came down the escalator in 2015 and announced he was running for President. He has brought many occasional voters and non-voters into the Republican Party, and they turned out big for him in 2024.”
While it’s true that Trump has attracted a new, low propensity constituency to the Republican party that used to eschew the party, he has also driven out an important constituency that used to vote with high propensity: the 80s-90s typical college educated suburban Republican. I am one of those voters. I spent a career in national security and in my 50s I find the Republican party of Donald Trump to be one of apologists for Vladimir Putin, and other anti-American powers around the world. We have become “the baddies” under Trump’s foreign policy as he appears to be determined to destroy NATO and alienate all of those countries in the world that believe in liberal democracy, human rights and free trade. I’ve completed my turn to the Democratic party this week as I registered as a Democrat. I will continue to vote Democrat until the Republican party returns to the national security posture of Reagan.
So despite invoking Reagan’s name, what you’re really saying is you’re a Bush/Cheney/Lindsay Graham/establishment type neocon, who, would rather join the radical democrat party and support their crazy DEI, anti-1st Amendment, anti-2nd Amendment, anti-woman (males in womens’ sports) and tyrannical big-government, big tax, low freedom agenda…than to accept that perhaps some people in the Republican party now have an updated view on war, and a better understanding of how defense contractor lobbying controls politicians. Seems an unbalanced decision to me, to throw so much away over what boils down to really just one disagreement. Unless, perhaps, you never really supported traditional conservative views in the first place??
I believe none of those things that you impute to me. My one disagreement as you put it is a very important one. I have seen war and do not like it any more than a normal human would, but I am also not impressed with anti-American alt-Right personalities that claim not to like war while assuming the stances of our enemies, all but ensuring a large war in the near future. If you really oppose war and actually believe in the US’s traditional values, you would support a strong, secure Europe and the revitalization of both their militaries and ours.