More than 42% of registered voters in Pennsylvania cast ballots in last month’s election, marking a significant jump in participation over turnout in the last municipal election in 2023.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt certified the results of the Nov. 4 election, which featured a retention vote for three state Supreme Court justices and races for mayor in several of the state’s largest cities, county executives and Philadelphia’s district attorney.
Schmidt said he had reviewed results certified in each of the 67 counties and formally certified the statewide results.
“I extend my thanks to county election officials, who spent the last few weeks diligently counting eligible votes and confirming that Pennsylvania held yet another free, fair, safe, and secure election,” he said.
Last month’s election also included statewide races for positions on the state’s appellate courts including Commonwealth Court and Superior Court. Nearly 42.5% of voters cast ballots, compared to about 37% in the last municipal election in 2023, when there was also a state Supreme Court position on the ballot.
The retention race for Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht dominated the election cycle. Third-party spending aimed at unseating the three justices transformed the usually quiet municipal election into a media blitz to persuade voters either to boot or keep them.
Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht, who were first elected in 2015 as Democrats, won by the broad margins common in judicial retentions. Their results maintain the court’s 5-2 Democratic majority, although Donohue, 72, will be able to serve only three years before reaching the mandatory retirement age for state judges.
Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said the high turnout was the result of a combination of attention heaped on the Supreme Court race and voters’ response to the turmoil that followed President Donald Trump’s return to office.
Many voters, Borick said, were “highly energized for their first opportunity to express their views” on Trump’s first nine months in office.
“You put those things together and it’s a recipe for the higher than average turnout we experienced in 2025,” he said, adding that while it’s likely some of that effect would carry over to the 2026 midterm elections, it would be unwise for Democrats to rely on a repeat next year.
Before the Department of State can certify statewide election results, counties must complete two audits of their results, Schmidt’s office said.
By law, each county must perform a recount of at least 2% of all ballots cast or 2,000 ballots, whichever is less.
The other audit is a statistically based risk-limiting audit, which involves randomly selected counties hand-tallying votes for a randomly chosen statewide race in randomly selected batches of ballots.
The department livestreamed the random contest selection process and the one to randomly select which counties were selected to audit random batches of ballots.
Superior Court Judge Alice Beck Dubow’s retention race was selected and auditors in nine counties manually reviewed 4,343 ballots to confirm the reported results were correct, the department said.
