I am probably too late to answer this for you, but hopefully it will be useful for someone else. I also had a problem with this, and I decided not to do it through Cordoba, but instead used the .NET method provided by Parse. This is bad elsewhere, documented (other than Parse), from what I experienced, and we, too, were disappointed with it on Android and ended it through Java.
First open the project folder, go to the Platforms folder, and then into the WP8 folder and open this Visual Studio Solution file.
Then right-click on the C # project directory in the solution explorer, as shown below. Select Manage NuGet Packages.

Then find โParseโ in the NuGet package manager and click โInstallโ:

Then go to your App.xaml.cs file (shown in the screenshot):

And add the following after import to the C # file: using Parse;
Then, inside the constructor of the App class, inside the same App.xaml.cs file App.xaml.cs add the following:
this.InitializeComponent(); this.Suspending += OnSuspending; ParseClient.Initialize(APP_ID_HERE, .NET_KEY_HERE); // these values come from Parse this.Startup += async (sender, args) => { ParseAnalytics.TrackAppOpens(RootFrame); await ParsePush.SubscribeAsync(""); };
Then finally enable ID_CAP_PUSH_NOTIFICATION in WMAppManifest.xml as shown:

Once all this is done, you will be able to receive unauthorized push notifications from Parse. Hope this helps, I had a lot of problems that I discovered while working on the implementation of Cordova for Windows Phone 8.