Reports Falsely Claim More Than 200,000 Amish Voters Registered to Vote for Trump in Swing State

In the run-up to the US presidential election, social media posts claimed that more than 200,000 Amish, a traditionalist Christian group in North America, had registered to vote for Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. However, this is incorrect: the Amish population in Pennsylvania numbers approximately 94,000 people, almost half of whom are minors and therefore not eligible to vote.

An Instagram post that circulated in several countries, including the US and Cameroon, shared a video of horse-drawn carriages showing people – reportedly Amish – waving banners and signs showing their support for Trump.

According to the post, more than 200,000 Amish people registered to vote in the 2024 US elections on November 5, after Vice President Kamala Harris “raided the Amos Miller Organic Milk Farm,” located in Pennsylvania.

Miller, a farmer in Lancaster County, is reported indicted by the Department of Agriculture and the state Attorney General for selling raw milk without a license (archived here).

“The Amish have taken sides after Kamala Harris administrator raided the Amos Miller Organic Milk Farm. And that side is Freedom, Deregulation and Donald Trump 2020: 45-50,000 Amish registered to vote (video) Now in 2024: 200,000+ voter registrations,” reads the after published on October 24, 2024.

A similar post claimed that 180,000 Amish were registered to vote in Pennsylvania spread in Spanish and was debunked by AFP Fact Check here.

The Amish are one religious group settled mainly in the United States and Canada. They practice Anabaptist Christianity, rejecting modern technology and fields of work without using most agricultural machinery (archived here).

Pennsylvania is an important jurisdiction because it is considered a swing state, meaning there is no clear candidate in the polls. The state has 19 of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needs to win the election (archived here).

In 2020, President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania with about 80,000 votes (archived here).

But the claim that 200,000 Amish registered to vote for Trump in the state is false.

Small population

According to statistics from the Amish Studies Department at Elizabethtown College’s Young Center, the estimated Amish population in Pennsylvania in 2024 is 92,660 people (archived here).

Steven M. Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, told AFP Fact Check that “it is totally impossible for there to be 180,000 registered Amish voters in Pennsylvania.”

“The total number of Amish voters in the state could be at most several thousand, not tens of thousands,” he added.

Nolt argued that “about half or a little more than half of the Amish population is under the age of 18,” so the number of eligible Amish in Pennsylvania would be about 45,000.

“Only a small percentage of these people would likely be registered to vote,” he noted.

Nolt further noted that while there are some settlements where voting has long been tolerated and continues to be tolerated practiced by a minority“many Amish communities in Pennsylvania discourage voting so strongly that it is virtually forbidden” (archived here).

Furthermore, the video in the claim is old. If you take a closer look at the banners, you will see the names “Trump Pence” – referring to Donald Trump and his 2020 running mate Mike Pence.

Trump’s current running mate is JD Vance, a 40-year-old senator from Ohio.

A reverse image search also revealed the same video in the post we debunked Facebook four years ago next to the captions: “Amish Trump parade” (archived here).

Aside from viral reports, AFP Fact Check found no other content or news about an alleged 180,000 to 200,000 Amish registering to vote for Trump.