The Amish might have gotten with the times and tried to play a role in President-elect Donald Trump’s crushing 2024 victory because of a government raid on a farm earlier this year.
Trump’s victory was secured when he won the largest swing state’s 19 electoral votes after losing it in 2020. According to former Trump adviser Jan Halper-Hayes, conservative activist Scott Pressley registered 180,000 new Amish voters, though this is certainly an overestimate as Pennsylvania’s Amish population is around 92,000, according to the Young Center’s research.
The voter registration drive was the first among the Amish in Pennsylvania history. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who ran much of Trump’s ground game, the Amish hadn’t previously been mobilized “in significant numbers.”
The reason for their sudden switch was a case of “government overreach.”
“The Democrats did make a mistake because there was government overreach with some of the Amish farmers,” Musk said in an interview with Tucker Carlson. “They’re farmers. They’ve been farming the same way for a long time.”
“And there was some … government overreach that shut down some Amish farmers, which really made them pretty upset,” he continued. “And you just need to be able to channel that, the fact that they’re upset, like, well, there’s a thing you can do about it, which is called voting, and we’re happy to transport.”
The conservative Christian community, which eschews modern technology, settled in Pennsylvania in the 18th century after William Penn offered them refuge from persecution and conscription in Europe. The community has boomed over the years, with many of the 400,000 residing in Pennsylvania.
Political involvement of the Amish is usually minimal, characteristic of their stance of isolation from the outside world. This changed in 2024, largely due to the case of a government raid on an Amish farmer.
Amos Miller’s farm has been the subject of legal disputes with the Pennsylvania government and the Department of Justice for years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration connected it to a 2016 listeria outbreak that killed one person in Florida and sickened another in California, the National Agricultural Law Center reported.
The DOJ sued Miller in 2019 after it was found that his farm wasn’t in compliance with federal regulations. After an E. coli outbreak and news that Miller didn’t have a permit to sell milk in Pennsylvania, agents from Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture raided his farm, seizing much of his food and dairy products. In the ensuing case, Miller was banned from selling milk in Pennsylvania, with the case ongoing.
The case was seen by the Amish community as government tyranny and helped mobilize them against the party of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
Around half of the Amish in Pennsylvania are based around Lancaster, and Trump won Lancaster County by 17 points. Other significant Amish populations are scattered across the state, including in Butler County.
However, Steven Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, told PBS that the Amish voting population isn’t very large, even when fully registered. Due to the high birthrate, less than half of the Amish are of age to vote.
Speaking a week before the election, he sowed doubt about whether they would vote in significant numbers.
“For most Amish history and in most Amish communities today, Amish people don’t vote,” Nolt told the outlet. “They haven’t voted, they’re not voting, and I think it’s safe to say in the near future we wouldn’t expect them to.”
“Even if we would imagine, for example, that here in Lancaster, there would be a tremendous percentage in percentage terms … we’re looking at several hundred to maybe a thousand additional voters,” he added.
The true number of Amish who ended up voting is unknown, though sources told the New York Post that they came out in significantly higher numbers than previously. One source told the outlet that the group turned out in “unprecedented numbers.”
Trump won Pennsylvania by nearly 140,000 votes, with 98% reporting.
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