Editorial: High turnout shows Pennsylvania voters are engaged

It isn’t really a surprise when people don’t turn out for an election the year after a president is selected.

Especially in Pennsylvania.

As a perennial swing state, Pennsylvania is lobbied hard during a presidential year. The ads are everywhere — on TV, on the radio, online and in mailboxes, flooding homes in a monsoon of postcards.

So when we come to the off-year, when positions like municipal council seats and judges of election are on the ballot, it’s understandable that people are still exhausted from the year before. The 2024 election was enough to make anyone want to hide under the bed for a while.

But people did their duty that year, with record voter turnout. The tide this year ebbed in the May primary. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported that only about 22% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans showed up at the polls — a significant drop from the previous two off-year elections.

That wasn’t the case with this week’s general election. Turnout in Allegheny County was 44.6% of 913,202 registered voters. In Westmoreland, it was 42.4% of 250,768 registered voters.

For context, those are midterm-level numbers — the kind Pennsylvania usually sees two years after a presidential race, when a governor and all state and federal House members are on the ballot. The 2025 general election turnout for both counties met or surpassed the midterm numbers from 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014.

That speaks to how seriously people took what was happening in their communities. Their mayors mattered. So did the question of judicial retention, from the state Supreme Court to county benches.

This is what democracy needs: people engaged in the issues that affect them. To quote “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” We all need to show up, or decisions will be made by others without our input.

That doesn’t mean everyone must agree. The top issue in Pennsylvania was whether three Supreme Court judges would be retained. Despite heavy advertising and campaigning, the result was far from a landslide.

In Democratic-leaning Allegheny County, the vote was roughly 70% to 30% in favor of retention. In Republican-­heavy Westmoreland, it was closer to 53% to 47%. Statewide, it was about 62% to 38%.

Those numbers mean something in the context of high turnout. They show that people didn’t just vote along party lines. They deliberated. They weighed the issues. They thought about how and why they were voting — and then they showed up.

This isn’t just people going through the motions. This is active participation — and this is why Pennsylvania will continue to be a swing state.