In 2021, 71,335 people voted. Maria McLaughlin narrowly carried the county for Supreme Court with just below 50% of the vote. She was the only judicial Democrat to do that well in the county. Lamont McClure was about 2,700 votes over 50% in the County Executive’s race, beating Steve Lynch by 12%. Democrats took the top three spots out of the five County Council seats.

In 2023, 72,436 people voted. Dan McCaffery won the county by 14% for Supreme Court, hitting 57%. Jill Beck, Timika Lane, and Matt Wolf all won the county in statewide judicial races. Brian Panella won a seat on Common Pleas by 8%. Tara Zrinski beat John Cusick by 8% for Controller. Democrats won the only two contested County Council seats fairly easily.

Recent history has been good to Democrats. They have not lost an Executive, Controller, District Attorney, or Court of Common Pleas race in the county since 2013. Likely Turnout numbers say that trend has a decent chance to continue. Likely voters (voters who voted in 2 of the last 4 county elections) plus people who have been mailed a vote-by-mail ballot favor Democrats by a 36,405 to 30,037 margin. There are 7,385 independents, 225 Libertarians, and 40 Greens who also meet this criteria. The total number of voters expected under this screen are 74,092. At this turnout, it’s very likely Tara Zrinski will be the next Executive and Jeremy Clark will win the seat on the Court of Common Pleas. I’d also expect “yes” for the sitting Supreme Court Justices to carry the county.

There are ways for things to still swing the other way though. First off, turnout could simply fall short of expectations. A turnout similar to 2021 would likely be more competitive, as McClure outperformed the ticket as a whole that year by over 4,500 votes. Even then though, you have to remember that Zrinski was the top vote getter for Council, and she could still win. The second possibility for the GOP is that they win independents by a crushing margin- but they would need north of 70% of independents to make that happen. The third possibility is that the Republicans pull over a sizable chunk of Democrats. In reality, the GOP needs a little bit of all three, or a massive surge of federal election year Republican voters to show up, for which there is no sign of it happening right now.

I think the one certainty for me is that the strategy of the Northampton County GOP is not conducive to them pulling this off. Mailing about Charlie Kirk and being adversarial about vote-by-mail and early voting is not going to make them appeal to more moderate voters. So while they do have a chance, and there are factors beyond what the parties do (Is the Northampton Democratic Party doing anything?), right now Northampton County Republicans are probably swimming a bit uphill. Things aren’t trending well for them either. A few weeks ago they had opportunities to close in. Now they actually trail in non-2023 voters who are requesting ballots by 7,336 to 6,765. In other words, the unlikely voters becoming likely because they requested a ballot are moving towards the Democrats fairly quickly. If that holds, the outcome seems strongly likely to be obvious.