Franklin County turnout is the most in 24 years

Jim Hook, jhook@publicopinionnews.com

CHAMBERSBURG - Franklin County beefed up support for Republican candidates with a heavy voter turnout on Tuesday.

The county’s 76 percent turnout was the highest in 24 years, and the voting was decidedly Republican.

“Republicans voted Republican,” said Robert Thomas, Franklin County committeeman to the Pennsylvania GOP. “They didn’t drift away.”

Local voters delivered a 71 percent majority to Donald Trump, the identical majority that helped incumbent President George W. Bush defeat Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2004. In the Bush-Kerry race Democrats mustered 28 percent of the county vote, but this year Hillary Clinton took just 25 percent.

The Bush turnout had been the highest in the county for a Republican presidential campaign since at least 2000. The GOP nominee typically gets 66 to 68 percent of the vote.

The strong local GOP vote offsets a similar Democratic swing in Pennsylvania's cities and major suburbs. Trump won Pennsylvania.

“I really think Donald Trump’s populist message hit home with people,” said Dwight Weidman, past chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. “It’s probably nothing new. We’ve heard it over and over: The working guy has been left out of the process. Everything Trump said rang true with them. It was a testament of the power of the people.”

"I think it was proved throughout the rest of the commonwealth in small towns and farming areas," said Hugh Jones, retired chairman of the Shippensburg University political science department. "He attracted those people because they are frustrated with big government and Washington. He was a breath of fresh air, despite that sometimes his fresh air wasn't that fresh, or was too fresh."

Down the ballot in the county, Republican candidates saw similar majorities:

  • Sen. Pat Toomey got 70 percent , attorney general nominee John  Rafferty 72 percent, auditor general nominee John Brown 67 percent  and treasurer nominee Otto Voit 65 percent.
  • Even U.S. Rep. BIll Shuster, R-Everett, got 66 percent of the vote to roundly defeat tea party Republican Art Halvorson, the Democratic nominee from Bedford County, 44,968 to 22,366. Shuster also won 11 of 12 counties in Pennsylvania's 9th Congressional District.
  • Five-term state Rep. Rob Kauffman, R-Chambersburg, garnered 72 percent of the vote to defeat Christine Tolbert, a Democrat and retired teacher, 21,446 to 8,121. 

Weidman said on Wednesday that Trump’s campaign motivated people who had not voted in years.  

“I filled about a few dozen affirmations yesterday for people who were inactive,” said Weidman, judge of elections in Greene 4. “I put that down to the Trump effect of bringing people out.”

Thomas said conservative Democrats and conservative independents also went for Trump.  The area is generally conservative, and voters are concerned about who will be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Hillary Clinton also was unpopular with local voters.

"The discontentment with Hillary was deeper than I anticipated," Jones said. "I don't know why she's so unpopular."

Trump’s margin in the county was greater than the GOP edge of registered voters. Franklin County's electorate is 59 percent Republican, 27 percent Democrat and 14 percent other.

“As the county has increased in registered voters, the plurality hasn’t changed among Republicans,” said Thomas, a long-serving county commissioner.

More people in Franklin County voted for Trump in 2016 (49,554) than voted in the record 85 percent turnout (43,517) of 1992. Democratic Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in 1992 defeated incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot.

Just a few years later, the steadily growing county was deemed a metropolitan area, and Republicans have consistently held a rough 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration over Democrats.

Some polling places on Tuesday saw more than 80 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Guilford 2, the Penn National neighborhood, had 85 percent turnout, and Antrim 2, northeast of Greencastle, had 84 percent. Two districts in Fannett Township had 83 percent turnout.

A record number (70,593) of county residents voted on Tuesday, 10 percent more than the previous record set in election of 2008 between Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain. 

In eight of the past nine presidential elections since 1984, more than 70 percent of voters in Franklin County went to the polls. Turnout slipped to 68 percent in the George W. Bush-Al Gore contest of 2000.

The percentage turnout for 2016 in Franklin County was the highest since Motor Voter legislation of 1995 made it easier for people to register to vote and kept inactive voters on the books longer. More people are registered, but that doesn’t mean more vote.

Jim Hook, 717-262-4759