Data from Pennsylvania’s April primary election shows more than 16,000 Democrats in Philadelphia chose to write in a candidate rather than vote for President Joe Biden. Of those who wrote in a name, 416 cast their Democratic primary vote for former President Donald Trump.
Primary election data from Philadelphia, provided by the City Commissioners Office and first reported by NBC Philadelphia, reveals that 16,216 Democrats cast a write-in vote for the April 23 primary election.
Of the write-in votes cast, 84 were cast for Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, 118 were for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and 120 write-in votes were recorded for independent presidential candidate Cornel West.
An additional 270 write-in votes were recorded for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Philadelphia City Commissioners Office reported that Biden won the majority of the city’s primary electorate, with the president garnering 85.27 percent of the vote.
Write-in votes accounted for 9.55 percent of all ballots cast. An additional 5.19 percent of the vote, or 8,808 ballots, went to Democratic challenger Dean Phillips.
While media outlets have speculated the former president could face an uphill battle in Pennsylvania come November, Trump received 79.82 percent of the vote, while 18.01 percent went to former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and 2.17 percent of ballots consisted of write-in votes.
Trump currently leads Biden in an aggregate of polls analyzed by Real Clear Polling, with the current president trailing his predecessor by 2 percent. Biden was determined the winner of Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes with a margin of just over 80,000 votes following the 2020 presidential election.
Pennsylvania Democrats are also losing ground to Republicans across the state, seeing 29,000 voters leave the Democratic Party between March and May. Of those, over 18,000 registered with the Republican Party, while 11,000 are registered with neither major party.
It was also reported in February that Trump raised more money from Pennsylvania donors than Biden or any of his Republican challengers in 2023. Over the course of the year, Biden’s presidential campaign received just over $1.5 million from Pennsylvanians. In comparison, political donors in the Keystone State gave more than $2.1 million to Trump over the same period.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
