Today, the New York Times gets in on the act:

For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all.

As the story notes, swings in voter registration happen all the time. Often it's reflective of nothing more than which party has the better field organization or the more heated primary. It's also true that party affiliation often does not have an impact on Election Day turnout. Plenty of registered Democrats pulled the lever for Bush in 2004, for instance.

But a sustained movement away from the GOP over a period of years is significant:

[F]or a shift away from one party to sustain itself — the current registration trend is now in its fourth year — is remarkable, researchers who study voting patterns say. And though comparable data are not available for the 21 states where voters do not register by party, there is evidence that an increasing number of voters in those states are also moving away from the Republican Party based on the results of recent state and Congressional elections, the researchers said.

So now we're onto something.

But if a damaged GOP brand and a new generation of progressive-leaning voters are causing an actual, quantifiable change in the nation's voting population, what are the implications? Well, the NYT suggests that this change in voter registration isn't all about choosing a new president:

Elected Democrats have made significant inroads even in places where Republicans have enjoyed a generation of dominance. In Colorado, for example, Democrats control the governorship and both houses of the Legislature for the first time in over four decades. Last year, Virginia Democrats gained a 21-to-19 majority over Republicans in the State Senate, the first time the party has controlled that body in a decade.

In New Hampshire, Democrats are in control of both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since 1874. In Iowa, Democrats have taken over the statehouse and the governor’s office simultaneously for the first time in a generation.

The changes in state government could have broad implications for Congressional redistricting and on policies like immigration, health care reform and environmental regulation, which are increasingly decided at the state level.

But even as we are measuring the impact, we have to ask if these shifts can be sustained. Are they a reaction to the general incompetence of the GOP -- from the Bush administration to Republican-controlled state governments -- all across the country? If so, does that mean these trends will slow down and reverse as new leaders take office? Or is this about a generation of Millennials coming of age and engaging in the political process?

This election will answer some of these questions, I suspect. But not all of them.

In Pennsylvania, longtime Republican strongholds in counties throughout the state are slowly shifting away from the GOP.

On Thursday, in Dauphin County -- which includes the state capitol of Harrisburg -- the numbers of registered voters looked like this: 81,489 Democrats and 81,340 Republicans.

In Philadelphia suburbs like Bucks and Montgomery counties, the trend is the same.

Waves of new Democratic voter were registered during the heated primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. That month of intensive campaigning certainly helped to put some areas over the top.

But this change is part of a longer-term demographic trend, and the end of the primary hasn't stopped the movement:

Statewide, Democrats have added voters since the April 22 primary, picking up 37,529 registrations while Republicans have lost 1,504, according to figures from the Pennsylvania Department of State [...]

From November 2007 to April's primary, the Republican Party lost 58,119 registered voters.

We still have a lot of work to do between now and November to maintain our control of the Penn. House, but information like this is heartening.