A Closer Look at State College’s Voting Statistics

President-elect Donald Trump owes much of his campaign success to his ability to convince our swing state of Pennsylvania to vote for him. Pennsylvania hasn’t given a Republican an electoral vote since George H. W. Bush in 1988. The highly contested election on Tuesday came down to 68,236 votes in Pennsylvania that favored Trump.

The left-leaning town of State College voted for Clinton with a margin of 7,173 votes between her and Trump. Third party candidates secured slightly more than 1,000 votes in Happy Valley as well.

Some may have rejoiced at what appeared to be a large amount of voters who passed through the HUB-Robeson on Tuesday, but statistics show that doesn’t mean much when countered with the county, state, and national voter turnout rates. State College had an average turnout rate of 45.43 percent — about 17 percentage points lower than Centre County (62.37 percent) and 23 percentage points lower than Pennsylvania (68.44 percent). Across the United States, 55.6 percent of registered voters turned out, according to the United States Election Project— beating State College by a little more than 10 percent.

In Centre County, however, it was an overall record turnout, with 76,932 voters who cast ballots on Election Day, slightly more than the previous high total of 76,338 in 2008.

There were 42,644 voters registered but only 19,377 casting ballots in State College. Only eight voting locations in State College had more than a 50 percent turnout and of those eight, four had 1,000 people or less registered at them.

It played out in Centre County with Clinton winning narrowly by 1,456 votes and dotting a small patch of blue in the overwhelmingly red state on projection boards election night. Almost an even tie between Democrats and Republicans, Centre County is now the only blue-ish bastion between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

More statistics about Centre County’s voting trends can be found here. Pennsylvania’s information can be found here.