Post overstates number of Amish voters in Pennsylvania | Fact check

An Oct. 22 Threads post (direct link, archive link) includes a video slideshow of people posing with political signs reading “Amish for Trump.”
“180,000 registered New Amish voters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,” the post’s caption reads. “Thanks in huge part to @ScottPresler. You know it’s a huge deal when the amish (sic) starts getting involved in politics.”
The post was liked more than 400 times in three days. A similar post on X, formerly Twitter, was reposted more than 14,000 times.
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The figure in the post is impossibly high, according to experts and population estimates. The estimated Amish population in Pennsylvania is about 93,000, and the estimated Amish population in the Lancaster County area is about 44,000. The number of eligible Amish voters in Lancaster County in total is about 17,000.
Steve Nolt, a professor of Anabaptist studies at Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown College and researcher of Amish history, said the claim is “completely bogus” because “there simply aren’t anywhere close to that many eligible Amish voters in Lancaster County.”
Nolt said that as of summer 2024, the estimated Amish population in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, area – home to the largest Amish settlement in the U.S. – was 43,640. He said when looking solely at Lancaster County, that number drops to about 38,400.
“Given the Amish population profile, more than half the population is under age 18,” Nolt said in an email. “Thus, the rough number of potential eligible Amish voters – age 18 and up – in Lancaster County, even if every single eligible Amish voter was registered, 100%, would be about 17,000 people max.”
It’s also “implausible to believe” that every eligible Amish voter in Lancaster County is registered to vote “given the church’s longstanding discouragement of voting,” Nolt said. In 2020, just under 3,000 Amish people voted in Lancaster County, he said.
“We’re talking several thousand Amish votes, potentially, from Lancaster County – maybe not insignificant in a close election where every vote counts,” Nolt said. “But the idea that there are tens of thousands of Amish voters in Lancaster County, let alone 180,000, is false and demonstrates that the person sending the message never contacted us to talk about our data.”
Kyle Kopko, an adjunct political science professor at Elizabethtown College whose research includes Amish voting patterns, also said the claim is false, noting that the entire Amish population in Pennsylvania is estimated to be about 93,000.
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Drilling further into the numbers, there were 4,125 registered Amish voters in Lancaster County in 2020, according to a 2023 presentation Kopko authored titled “Plain Politics: Assessing Old Order Amish Voter Participation in the 2004, 2016, and 2020 Presidential Elections.” Turnout among Amish registered voters totaled 2,940 that year, according to the presentation, which was published in The Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities.
Kopko said while a “small percentage” of Amish people register to vote, those who do register “overwhelmingly” align with the Republican Party. His presentation shows in Lancaster County, about 94% of registered Amish voters were registered Republicans.
The Economist reported that Republicans in Pennsylvania have pushed to get more Amish people to vote this presidential election cycle. Polling averages by The New York Times show the critical swing state remains a toss-up between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The social media posts use the term “New Amish,” which Nolt said he takes to mean “newly registered” Amish voters. He added that if the posts are referencing the “New Order Amish,” an Amish subgroup, the claim would still be wrong, as most members in this small group live in Ohio and none live in the Lancaster settlement.
The posts also mention voter mobilization efforts by Scott Presler, founder of Early Vote Action, an organization that focuses on registering and getting Republicans to the polls. Presler himself addressed the claim in an X post, saying the 180,000 figure is not “accurate” given the total Amish population in Pennsylvania.
USA TODAY reached out to the Threads and X users who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
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