People can talk all they want to about records being shattered across the Keystone State as its 67 counties continue sifting through voter registration applications, switches, address changes and the like.

But yesterday, officials in Allegheny County said: not so fast.

Total registration in Pennsylvania currently stands at 8.3 million -- about 50,000 less than the all-time record set in 2004 -- with counting not yet finished.

But up on Grant Street, they're all done, and the county didn't break any records.

Final tallies show 913,628 people registered in Allegheny County to vote for the April 22 primary, according to the county's Elections Division director Mark Wolosik. That's 18,757 votes shy of the record set in Allegheny County before the 2002 gubernatorial primary, featuring a vigorous contest between Ed Rendell and Bob Casey Jr. and a pretty ambitious voter registration drive.

Mr. Wolosik isn't quite sure why registrations didn't surge past 2002 record of 932,385 voters. But he did speculate that a year after the 2002 primary, a new state law prompted a big voter purge -- or, rather, a "voter removal program," as he and other county officials prefer to call it -- resulting in about 160,000 people being taken off the rolls. Those numbers are beginning to climb back again, Mr. Wolosik noted.

Since the November election, there's been a net increase of 25,587 new voters, and of those, 14,149 people in Allegheny County have switched to the Democratic Party -- 12,100 of them brand new voters. On the other hand, 5,841 people registered with the Republican Party, 2,835 of them new voters.

So why aren't the county's numbers keeping pace with the state in terms of voter registration?

The answer is obvious, says Republican political consultant William J. Green.

"The fact that we may set records is amazing given that we've lost population in this state," he said. "But in Allegheny County we're losing people at an even greater rate," whether due to our large elderly population or just a lot of people moving to Cranberry. "I'm not going to accept the premise that they left the state.

"There are no statewide issues, no ballot questions, no hugely competitive primary races. All the increases you're seeing are attributable to the presidential campaign, nothing else," Mr. Green said.

Most of the new voters are younger, and most of them are probably students at the county's half-dozen colleges and universities, said Gerald Shuster, professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh.

"That's where the big push has come from," he said, adding that he didn't think the 2003 voter purge had much to do with Allegheny County's lagging registration numbers.

"The only two groups who vote are the young, between 18 and 25, and the supervoters, the senior citizens, who always vote. Besides those groups, who's left to spike the numbers?"

While some reports have downplayed the effectiveness of student voter registration drives because many attending the state's colleges may be from out of state, "many of the students I know are registered here because they can change back to their home addresses for the general election," Dr. Shuster said. "They're interested in this primary, though. They want to vote in Pennsylvania and make a difference."

Statewide, the total number of Democrats is 4.2 million, an increase of 8 percent since last fall's election, while the Republicans, at 3.2 million, declined by about 2 percent. From Dec. 31 to March 31, 142,864 voters registered with the Democratic Party -- a figure that includes both new voters and those switching -- while 37,937 registered as Republicans.

Also, Montgomery County, one of the four critical "collar counties" around Philadelphia along with Bucks, Chester and Delaware went Democratic last week after generations of being Republican, albeit one whose moderate suburban voters tend to cross over to the Democrats, especially in presidential elections.

Another collar county has gone Democratic, according to the latest state figures released today. Bucks County now has 185,413 Democrats registered compared to 181,941 Republicans.

Those figures could still change since Bucks County's elections bureau won't be releasing final tallies until today.