Donald Trump

FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Madison, Ala. Republican presidential front-runner Trump has staked out uncompromising positions on Asia policy that could potentially strain U.S. relations with the region if he wins the White House. He says China is ripping off America in trade and should be slapped with a fat import tax. And he claims U.S. military allies Japan and South Korea are freeloading and need to pull their weight. The pan-Pacific trade pact negotiated by the Obama administration is a "total disaster." (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

(John Bazemore)

Nearly 46,000 Pennsylvania Democrats have gone Republican since the start of 2016, twice as many as have shifted the other way, as a wild primary fight continues to upend the business of politics as usual and challenge the status quo.

Needless to say, much of this movement is being attributed to the rise of Donald Trump and the so-called "Ditch and Switch" movement, which leans on lifelong Democrats to abandon the party, register Republican and help ensure Trump's place in the November general election.

A website launched by two North Carolina sisters calling on Democrats to switch political parties and embrace Trump says, "For many years the Democratic Party has promoted agendas that most Americans did not agree with. Our country is deeply divided, and the silent majority has been bullied into silence by political posturing and underhanded agendas that favor the few while excluding the majority."

The statement supports Dr. G. Terry Madonna's theory that at least some of the 46,000 Democrats-turned-Republican in Pennsylvania belong to a disaffected class that felt overlooked by elected leaders, or at odds with Democratic party ethos.

"With the increase in support in exit polls for Trump among working class, blue-collar Democrats, it is my belief that these are people who fall into that genre," said Madonna, who is director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

"The other possibility is that you're finding some disaffected Democrats who believe the party has moved too far to the left. There are a number of possibilities," he added.

A third scenario involves Democrats who have long voted along Republican or conservative lines, but who have only now decided to shed the Democrat label.

Whatever their reasons, some almost certainly have to do with Trump's meteoric rise from reality television star to new face of the Grand Old Party. His success has been a flashpoint, both culturally and politically, and has left the Republican establishment in an uproar, and the party on the verge of Civil War, it would appear.

But what impact his cross-over appeal, and the party purge it helped spawn, will have on the primary and general election results remains to be seen.

It also cuts both ways, with more Latinos vowing to seek citizenship just to vote against Trump, and Democrats vowing to change parties, or not, in open primary states, in a last ditch effort to stop him by lending support to rivals, like Florida Senator, Marco Rubio.

But so far, at least, the numbers favor Trump's pull as a conservative evangelist, with evidence of this trend, which has so far disproportionately benefitted Pennsylvania Republicans, turning up in counties across this state and others.

In Massachusetts, as many as 20,000 Democrats have gone from blue-to-red this year with Trump cited as a primary reason. And in Ohio, as many as 1,000 blue collar workers have promised to switch parties and vote for Trump.

In Pennsylvania, at the Cumberland County Elections Office, director Penny D. Brown said although voters from both political parties have been changing allegiances this year, "there are more Democrats changing to Republican."

It was a different story in the 2008 primary, which pitted Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama for the Democratic ticket and saw John McCain nominated by the Republicans, she said. Then, Brown added, more Republicans changed their party affiliation to Democrat than vice versa.

In Dauphin County, voter registration is up this year by around 3,000 people, but that number was evenly distributed between Republicans, Democrats and third parties, an official said.

In Lancaster County, an estimated 1,125 Democrats became Republicans and 909 Republicans became Democrats in the last two months, according to LancasterOnline.

Statewide, there have been party changes reported in every Pennsylvania county, to varying degrees.

In Armstrong County, in the southwestern part of the state, elections director, Jennifer Bellas, said most favored the Republicans, although their reasons weren't always clear.

"We typically don't ask and they generally don't say," Bellas added.

Lori Oliver, elections director with Lebanon County, said from the first of the year through Friday, there were 3,183 party changes there, which included a definite "increase for the Republican party."

Oliver said the changes are more than she's seen in three years on the job.

In fact, Pennsylvania Department of State records show that the party changes seen in the first two months of this year are twice those seen in all of 2013, and on pace to eclipse those seen in 2014 and 2015 as well.

The former saw 19,900 Democrats go Republican and 16,600 Republicans go Democrat; while 29,800 Democrats went Republican and 17,860 Republicans went Democrat last year.

And while party switching is certainly par-for-the-course in presidential elections, experts say there is something unique this time around, not only because of the scale of that switching, but also where it's taking place.

This as entrenched political structures are being upended from liberal Massachusetts, now warming to Trump's extreme brand of conservatism, and traditionally conservative corners of the country finding that brand too extreme for them.

For voters like Pete Rung, a lifelong Democrat from St. Marys, Pa., who switched to the Republican party and plans to vote for Trump, the move appears to be based around his frustration with the Democratic party as much as anything else.

"I switched from Democrat to Republican because I'm a veteran, and any person in their right mind wouldn't vote for Hillary because of what she did to our GI's in Bengazi," Rung was quoted as saying in an interview with the Courier Express newspaper of DuBois, Pa.

"And 8 more years of Obama would be a disaster for what she will do to our military. Just ask a veteran," he added.

Rung's wife, Valerie, has joined him in defecting for reasons which include a similar aversion to the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

"I will not vote for Hillary (Clinton), I do not agree with her stand on abortion or gun rights," she told the paper.

But it's not just a lack of preferable options that has Democrats fleeing the party. Others have become enamored with the Trump persona and his policies.

Conversely, some Republicans are fleeing for the exact opposite reason, saying they no longer recognize the party or agree with the unconventional, firebrand politics that have earned Trump not only a seat at the table, but one driving the bus.

In appealing to registered Democrats and Independents, the "Ditch and Switch" website run by North Carolina sisters, Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, bills Mr. Trump's as a "non-traditional approach," one that is "untainted by Washington's one-sided politics, which give power to special interest groups and lobbyists."

The statement concludes by saying, "[Trump's non-traditional approach] is the exact makeover that the White House needs in order to 'Make America Great Again.'"

Regardless of the outcome, though, Trump's brand of agit-prop political theater won't soon be forgotten.

"This has no parallel in modern history," said Madonna, himself a political historian.

"You couldn't make this stuff up."