ANALYSIS: The Real Reason Parents’ Rights Took An Election Night Clobbering

The culture war is alive and well in a Pennsylvania bellwether county that, after going red for President Donald Trump in 2024, was swept in a blue wave as Democrats won all county-wide offices and the majority of school board races.

Those who saw Trump’s win in 2024 as a signal Republicans had defeated “woke” ideologies, such as transgenderism and equity initiatives, got a brutal reminder on election night that the country remains sharply divided.

In Bucks County, Democrats gained full control of the County Row offices on Nov. 4, including county Sheriff and district Attorney, reversing gains made during the COVID-19 era when the GOP swept the countywide elections. Democrats will also control the majority of Bucks County school boards, a blow to parents who’ve spent the past four years fighting to keep gender ideology and Marxism out of school curriculums. 

While Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro praises the results as a rejection of “chaos, higher prices and attacks on our foundation rights” and Republicans’ have promised to examine “where we can do better,” Bucks County voters tell the story of what determines elections in modern politics: getting out the vote.

Only 49.7% of registered Bucks County voters participated in the November 2025 elections compared to the 81.79% that voted in November 2024.

For decades, the Philadelphia suburbs were a stronghold for local Republicans. That changed in the 2010s when Philadelphia’s four suburban counties Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and Delaware County, shifted to Democrat control. Montgomery County was the first to flip blue when Shapiro won his county commissioner race in 2011, giving Democrats control of county leadership for the first time in 140 years.

Republicans never recovered from that loss and today Montgomery County is a blue stronghold.

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Whether trump wins or loses, flipping the PA house and senate is the way to dramatically improve our laws and our lives. https://t.co/CXw1TBJAfm

— Bucks County Democrats (@BucksDems) January 23, 2020

President Trump’s 2016 election left Pennsylvania Democrats in the Philadelphia suburbs shocked and angry. Chapters of Indivisible, a left-wing  grassroots group founded after Trump’s election, popped up throughout the Southeast Pennsylvania Region and worked alongside the Democrat party to channel their disdain for Trump into winning elections. Their anger and efforts worked.

In 2019, Democrats had a string of historic wins that gave them control of Bucks, Chester and Delaware County. In Bucks, Democrats won power for the first time in nearly four decades. In Delaware County, Democrats won power for the first time since the civil war.

Democrat County Commissioner Bob Harive, who is now running for Congress, won his 2019 election by the narrowest of margins: 664 votes. Harvie and fellow Democrat Commissioner, Diane Marseglia, went viral in 2024 when they publicly voted to disregard Pennsylvania’s elections laws.

If not for COVID-19, Bucks Democrats might have continued gaining strength year-by-year until it developed into a deep blue stronghold like neighboring Montgomery County. But the pandemic shook up the dynamics of local politics in Bucks County and across the country.

Under Democrat leadership, which included Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, Pennsylvanians endured some of the most draconian COVID policies in the country. This government overreach was strongly criticized by Republicans and Independents alike, who fueled their frustrations into a successful grassroots ballot initiative limiting the governor’s emergency powers through a change in the state’s constitution.

By the fall of 2021, frustrated Bucks County parents were showing up to school board meetings in droves demanding students no longer be required to wear masks or get vaccinated to attend school. Many engaged in local politics for the first time as a countywide grassroots coalition of parents focused on electing school board candidates sprung into action, knocking on doors and getting out the vote for the November 2021 election.

The 2026 Election Starts Today!

Vince Lombardi once said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” And we are getting right back on our feet and preparing for a huge 2026 election.

There are only 363 days until the 2026 election, and it will be… pic.twitter.com/u1Fnwi6RTw

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 5, 2025

Frustrated parents fueled a red wave in Bucks County with Republicans sweeping all 5 row offices and winning control of the majority of school boards. Parents cared, voters showed up and Republicans won.

But the momentum seemed short lived. As COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and faded into memory, many Republican parents disengaged from local activism and went back to their normal lives while Democrats poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into school board campaigns and went to work courting mail-in ballots.

Four years later, despite Republicans having more registered voters than Democrats, Bucks County politics have shifted from purple to blue.

Bucks County GOP leadership blamed “powerful outside forces” on their sweeping losses in an email sent to local Republican Committee members in the wake of Tuesday’s election results.

Comments on local social media pages reveal the county is more divided than its elections results suggest, as anti-MAGA Democrats view the results as hope for democracy’s survival and conservatives express concerns the new district attorney will adopt Philadelphia’s soft-on-crime policies. Some parents are concerned Democrat controlled school districts will push Marxist ideologies onto students and allow males to participate in girls sports.

While President Trump has taken executive action to stop gender ideology and root out far-left initiatives, the saying that “all politics are local” rings true.

Your local school board and state government is likely going to have more sway in the day-to-day matters of your life than an executive order from a president. This was one of the hard earned lessons of the COVID era that motivated so many to participate in civics for the first time in 2021.

While more than 50% of Bucks County voters chose not to participate in this year’s election, 100% have to live with the consequences and so will their children.