Election turnout continues to decrease year by year across the Commonwealth.
Based on unofficial vote counts from Pennsylvania’s primary election, voter turnout is down yet again.
Recent analysis shows the top ten Pennsylvania counties for voter turnout were Wyoming, Greene, Clearfield, Clarion, Blair, Schuylkill, Tioga, Lawrence, Crawford, and Jefferson.
Unofficial totals show Wyoming County had the highest voter turnout at only 34.37%.
The ten counties with the lowest voter turnouts this primary election cycle were Franklin, Delaware, Lehigh, Philadelphia, Fulton, Bradford, Northampton, Chester, Perry, and Carbon counties.
The unofficial totals show Franklin County with the lowest turnout at 15.86%.
Nineteen counties had a participation rate that fell under 20%. Notably, 12 counties saw a 10% decrease in voter turnout from 2021.
The largest decrease happened in Cameron County, with its total voter turnout falling from 40.3% in 2021 to just 20.09% in 2025.
Cameron, Fulton, Armstrong, Bedford, Lackawanna, Lebanon, Franklin, Elk, Juniata, and Bradford counties saw decreases of over 10% in voter turnout.
According to the unofficial totals, Lawrence and Clearfield counties were the only two that had an increase in voter turnout since 2021 with increases of 8.86% and 0.27% respectively.
Chris Borick, professor of political science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, discussed the possible reasons for lower turnout in a recent interview.
“It’s hard to sugarcoat to primary turnout numbers in the state. After some modest improvement in the last few cycles I had some optimism that the turnout levels may have been similar this spring. However the last few off-year elections may have been more outliers than a new normal, driven by the confluence of the arrival of mail ballots and the pandemic period,” he said.
Borick continued, “In essence we have regressed to the longer term mean which is always a force that shouldn’t be discounted in terms of predictive value. Finally there may be some elevated fatigue in the state after the over the top election activity last year. While there were a lot of important and competitive races on the ballot that should have been a draw, the electorate is pretty bear down right now.”
Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy/Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, agreed with Borick.
He said, “I think Chris is right about voter fatigue and perhaps motivation: the 2024 election and the money spent on advertising and campaign events made it seem like so much was at stake that people paid attention and were driven to get involved. Which I think raises the most important cause of the low turnout: a lack of information. These elections are so obscure to so many voters that they aren’t really sure about the candidates or even about some of the offices on the ballot.”
He continued, “The lack of campaign spending and campaign activities to raise awareness and generate interest was non-existent in many places. And, different from the prior two municipal elections, there were no state supreme court candidates on the ballot either. Add all those things together and you get the kind of turnout we had on the 20th – abysmal.”
