The Democratic Party saw an excessive loss of registered voters across battleground states, blue states, and red states over the course of Joe Biden’s presidency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections along the 30 states and the District of Columbia where voters register with a party. Republicans gained 2.4 million voters in those states.
The newspaper did the analysis using information compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm.
This marks the first time since 2018 that more new voters chose to register as Republicans than Democrats.
Although Democrats still hold a national registration advantage over Republicans, The Times says that could be attributable to the fact that predominantly Democrat California registers voters by party while predominantly Republican Texas does not.
“We fell asleep at the switch,” Maria Cardona, longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, told The Times. She added, “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.”
On Election Day in November 2020, Democrats had an 11% edge over Republicans in registrations. The party had a 6% edge in 2024. Party registration is not always indicative of how people will vote.
Democrats had major problems in four battleground states that require registration—Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, according to the analysis.
Republicans in North Carolina eliminated nearly 95% of the Democrats’ registration advantage. For Nevada, Democrats had the largest decline of any state except for deep-red West Virginia between 2020 and 2024, according to The Times.
“I don’t want to say, ‘the death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, an election analysis site, told The Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”
