In 30 states and Washington, D.C., voters may declare a political party affiliation at the time of registration or change their affiliation at any point. Over time, shifts in these registration figures provide analysts with one of the most reliable indicators of trends in voter sentiment and political momentum.
Drawing on data from the nonpartisan data firm L2, the New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher conducted an in-depth analysis of the changes in these numbers over the past few election cycles. His findings paint a stark picture for the Democratic Party. It is in the midst of what he calls a “voter registration crisis,” with the party “hemorrhaging voters long before they even reach the polls.”
Goldmacher first looked at how these figures shifted between 2020 and 2024. In the span of four years, Democrats lost roughly 2.1 million registered voters across the 30 states and the district that track party affiliation, while the GOP gained approximately 2.4 million.
As the map below shows, Democrats fell behind in each one of these states. This includes blue states such as California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, as well as the swing states of Arizona, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
The shift in Pennsylvania has been dramatic. In November 2020, Democrats held a registration advantage of 517,310 active voters. Today, that margin has shrunk to just 53,303.
A similar scenario has played out in North Carolina, where Democrats once enjoyed a 400,000-voter edge. Their lead now stands at less than 17,000.
Goldmacher noted that, in percentage terms, Democrats’ advantage over Republicans narrowed from nearly 11 points in 2020 to just over 6 points in 2024.
President Donald Trump was still able to win because so many Democratic votes are concentrated in deep-blue strongholds such as California and New York. By contrast, large red states such as Texas don’t allow voters to register by party affiliation — and thus aren’t reflected in the data.
In some cases, Democrats still retained an edge over Republicans (such as in Pennsylvania). But the majority of new registrations in other states, such as Florida, shifted from Democrats to the GOP. Goldmacher expects more states to follow.
Moreover, between 2018 and 2024, new young voters have shifted noticeably toward the Republican Party. In 2018, 66% of voters under 45 registered as Democrats, but by 2024 that share had fallen to just 48%.
Goldmacher reported that, last year, for the first time since 2018, new voter registrations nationwide favored Republicans over Democrats.
The graph below shows that, in 2023, new GOP registrations surpassed new Democratic registrations.
Summing up, Goldmacher reminded readers that not all voters register with a political party. Some choose to remain independent.
However, he emphasized that among voters who do register with “either major party, … the Democratic share has been cratering.” The data shows that, “in 2018, Democrats accounted for 63 percent of voters who newly registered as either Democratic or Republican. By 2024, the party’s share had shrunk to less than 48 percent.”
These numbers are clearly devastating for the Democratic Party.
Democratic National Committee member and political strategist Maria Cardona told the New York Times, “We fell asleep at the switch.”
Goldmacher explained that, “for years, the left has relied on a sprawling network of nonprofits … to register Black, Latino and younger voters. Though the groups are technically nonpartisan, the underlying assumption has been that most new voters registering would vote Democratic. Mr. Trump upended that calculation with the inroads he made with working-class nonwhite voters.”
“You can’t just register a young Latino or a young Black voter and assume that they’re going to know that it’s Democrats that have the best policies,” Cardona said.
I would argue that the Democrats have only one policy: to oppose everything that Trump does. Beyond that, they stand for nothing. They offer no vision, no ideas, and no solutions. Driven almost entirely by their hatred of Trump, the party has devolved into an echo chamber of wailing and outrage.
The majority of voters oppose open borders and resent being forced to pay for food, shelter, and healthcare for illegal immigrants as they struggle to provide for their own families.
They liked the idea of cutting fraud, waste, and abuse from the federal government.
They also strongly support Trump’s efforts to restore law and order in Washington, D.C., and hope to see him bring that same resolve to crime-ridden, Democrat-run cities nationwide. And rather than seeing Trump’s tough stance on crime as a threat to democracy, they consider it a necessary step to protect U.S. citizens.
TOP DEMOCRATIC 2028 ALTERNATIVES TO HARRIS LAG IN BLACK SUPPORT
Despite their army of well-paid strategists and experts and endless post-mortems on the 2024 election, Democrats have overlooked the most obvious reason of all for their defeat: They’ve surrendered too much ground to the party’s left-wing fringe, and the broader electorate simply isn’t on board.
And the new data from the New York Times confirms it.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. She is also a Heritage Foundation Academy fellow. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.