Former registered Democrats in Pennsylvania who now support former President Donald Trump predict a wave of traditional Democrat voters quietly pulling the ballot box lever for the Republican ticket over Vice President Kamala Harris in the key battleground state this year.
"This is Lackawanna County, okay. This is Scranton. This is where Joe Biden was born. This is where Robert Reich was born. Hillary Clinton has ties here with her family. This was a deep, deep blue county. But, when you walk into the poll, I think a lot of these people are going to are going to think twice and think, 'well, nobody knows how I'm voting -- which is the way it's supposed to be – I'm going with Trump,'" registered Independent voter David Kveragas told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this week.
Kveragas is a resident of the battleground county of Lackawanna, which is nestled in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley and has traditionally voted blue, last throwing its support behind a Republican in 1984 during President Ronald Reagan’s blowout election when he won each state except Washington, D.C., and Minnesota — the home state of Reagan’s competitor that year, former Vice President Walter Mondale.
The county has trended right in recent elections, however, teeing up a heightened election battle that will likely help determine how the key battleground state will swing come Nov. 5.
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Fox News Digital spoke with three Lackawanna County residents who were all previously-registered Democrats who now full-heartedly support Trump, despite initial hesitance and even outright disapproval during his first presidential run in 2016.
Susanne Green is a former Democrat who even previously worked for Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C., as the abortion provider’s financial manager and now supports Trump and is actively involved as a volunteer for the campaign.
Green said that she also anticipates her left-leaning neighbors and friends will quietly vote for Trump.
"They may be registered Republican or Democrat or independent, but they have told me privately, ‘Susanne, I'm not going to put a sign in my yard. I don't want everybody to know who I'm voting for, but I'm going to vote for Trump,'" Green told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this month.
Vince Sardo, a retired firefighter and former union boss of the Dunmore Firefighters IAFF Local 860, told Fox News Digital in a separate interview he also believes many of his Democrat friends and neighbors will vote for Trump without fanfare or changing their political affiliation.
"I have many friends that are registered Democrats, I'm not going to mention names, but some of them are Democratic leaders in communities, and they're voting for Trump," the formerly longtime registered Democrat told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview.
Political eyes are locked on Pennsylvania as the state that will likely determine the outcome of the election. Trump and Harris have both repeatedly zigzagged the state campaigning in recent weeks, while voter registration for the state released this week shows sizable shifts benefitting the GOP in the final stretch of the election cycle.
Following the close of voter registration in Pennsylvania on Monday, the Democratic Party accounts for nearly 44% of registered voters compared to the GOP's 40% but has seen its advantage over Republicans dwindle this year.
President Biden won the state in 2020 by 1.17 percentage points. That year, Democrats had a larger margin of registered voters compared to their Republican counterparts, at 4.2 million to 3.5 million. The data show that Democrats had a registration advantage over Republicans by 685,818 voters during the election that Biden won by 80,555 votes.
The GOP has whittled down that lead this year to a 297,824 margin. When comparing registered voters this election year to 2020, Democrats face a net loss of 257,281 voters, while Republicans have a net gain of 428,537 registered voters.
More than double the number of previously registered Democrats changed their party affiliation this cycle compared to the number of registered Republicans who left the party: 54,668 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation compared to 25,634 Republicans, Pennsylvania Department of State data shows.
"I don't think it's going to be quite as close as they're saying. I mean, both sides are going to say that because you always play like you're behind. That just goes with campaigning. I just see too much momentum for Trump. We won't know that night, because in Pennsylvania we're so slow," Kveragas said.
Fox News Digital spoke with the three Pennsylvania voters about their voting history and found that each individual had deep ties to the Democratic Party before registering as a Republican – or in Kveragas’ case, registering as a Republican in the 1990s, before registering as an Independent when Mitt Romney was at the top of the GOP presidential ticket in 2012.
Green told Fox News Digital that she was raised in a Catholic, Democratic household in Pennsylvania, similar to many people across the commonwealth back in the 1960s and 1970s. She argued that the Democratic Party of her youth had morphed into the left-wing party that she described as "radical."
"It meant that you were a patriot," Green told Fox Digital of what it meant to be a Democrat back in the 1970s. "That was a time when there was the bicentennial and everything was red, white and blue. There was, you know, happy patriotism … It was about doing what was right for your country. It was living together in harmony."
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Green registered as a Democrat as a young adult and spoke with Fox Digital about her employment with Planned Parenthood as its financial manager in Washington, D.C., in 2000.
"Safe, legal and rare. Which was the advertisement at the time when I worked at Planned Parenthood. That abortion should be safe, legal and rare. And I believe that I still feel that way today. I did find out when I worked there that there were people from all affiliations who would make contributions to Planned Parenthood. Many people were Republicans … and I found out at that point it was called Republicans for Choice, which is actually a very large movement now," Green said, noting that she has never been a hard-line supporter of abortion but believes there should be exceptions such as in the case of rape, incest or life of the mother.
The 2016 election spurred Green to rethink her support of the Democratic Party, pointing to Donna Brazile when she worked as a CNN commentator and fed debate questions during the primary process to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
"I didn't feel that there was a change until, I would say, until Hillary Clinton was running. And I did see a change at that time. And I recall getting ready to vote in the primary … I think I was living in Virginia at the time, and finding out that she had colluded with, I think, with the chairman of the DNC to obtain the questions for the debate against Bernie Sanders and perhaps others. And I thought, 'that's not right. That's not something anybody should be doing,'" she said.
Green voted for Trump in 2016 and is now volunteering for the campaign in Lackawanna County.
For Sardo, he switched political teams and voted for Trump in the 2020 election.
"Just towards the end of my career, I retired in 2019 … as far as the way I looked at it with the Democratic Party, they just started going way too far left for me," Sardo said.
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In addition to disagreeing with COVID-19 directives and mandates in the 2020 era, Sardo said he has a "major issue" with how parents speaking out about trans issues were characterized as "domestic terrorists."
"I had a major issue, I really did with, you know, parents that were kind of protesting against drag shows and elementary centers and kids mutilating their body. And then they became domestic terrorists because they're at school board meetings. You know, just just crazy stuff that was going on. Men in women's sports. I mean, really, come on," he said.
"I really started looking at, you know, the morality. And I think that was the turning point for me is being a God-fearing type person and finding my spirituality again because it was lost younger in my life. But, I just couldn't go along for the ride anymore with, you know, the way things were going with the Democratic Party going that far left," he said.
Sardo said that in his social circles of union workers and longtime Democrats, he is seeing big changes regarding how they will vote this election.
"I'm seeing a huge change. I have a lot of local friends because I was a union leader and then down in Harrisburg. And then when I came back, I was asked to help on Lackawanna County elections. I've helped on a commissioner race, and I've helped on local races in my community, my town, my borough. And I have a lot of people that are on Democratic committees and Democratic leadership roles in our community that are voting for Trump," he said.
Sardo added that he believes many Democrats will not change their party affiliation despite supporting Trump, citing the commonwealth’s closed primary process, which only allows voters to cast ballots for primary candidates in their registered party.
Kveragas is a registered Independent voter and was no fan of Trump’s until he saw the 45th president’s policies put into action.
"I didn't vote for Trump [in 2016]. I voted against Hillary Clinton, who I paid a lot of attention to. I knew that we would be in deep trouble, especially coming out of the Obama years if we let her get in," he said.
"I actually had a letter in the Wall Street Journal in May of ‘16 because he was complaining about how the primaries work. And I said, you know, he can step out of the primary at any time if he doesn't like the system, you know, he can just leave. So I was not a Trump supporter even going into the election," he said.
The tide began to change for Kveragas when Trump was in office, and he saw improvements to the economy and peace across the world.
"He started cutting taxes. He started cutting regulations. The economy improved greatly. My retirement accounts, etc., were going up. We had peace. There were no new wars, no new real foreign incursions. We still had Afghanistan, but he was getting that as much under control as he could. I'm not big on foreign affairs, but he did the Abraham Accords, which was amazing. I mean, anyone else would get the Nobel Peace Prize for that. He got Arab countries to recognize Israel for the first time in their history. He went to South Korea. He went to North Korea and negotiated to get the remains of our soldiers lost in that war. And I had three uncles who served in Korea. So that's important to me there. He brought them back. He finally got that settled," Kveragas said.
For the trio of former Democrats who now support Trump, they all reported more or less the same: The Democratic Party has shifted harder to the left, leaving many Democrats finding refuge with Trump.
"It's so, so radical right now. I am shocked that there are still so many people who feel that, or don't realize, what direction the ship is about to go in. I mean, if the Democrats … win I am afraid for our country. I'm literally afraid for our country," Green said.
