The swing creates ‘a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from’
Democrats have lost ground to Republicans in all 30 states that record party affiliation, shedding 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections while the Republican Party gained 2.4 million, according to a Wednesday New York Times report.
“The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls,” the Times reported after analyzing voter registration data compiled by the analytics firm L2. “All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party,” the Times found, while “Republicans gained 2.4 million.”
“That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters,” the report went on, “a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”
“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, the director of data science at election analysis site Decision Desk HQ, told the Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”
The finding adds to the turmoil that has roiled the Democratic Party for months. A Politico report on Monday, for example, found that the Democratic National Committee is trailing far behind its Republican counterpart by nearly all fundraising metrics, as donors condemn DNC chairman Ken Martin and view the party as “rudderless, off message and leaderless.”
Many other Democrats, including prominent DNC members, have also expressed frustration with the party’s direction under Martin. In June, one DNC member called Martin “weak and whiny,” while another said the chairman has been “invisible.” That same month, two of the party’s most influential labor leaders quit their DNC posts, citing the party’s leadership. The DNC has seen bitter infighting since Martin took the helm early this year.
Sixty-two percent of Democrats say that their party’s leaders “should be replaced with new people,” with the Democratic rank-and-file disagreeing sharply with their leadership over the party’s priorities, a June poll found. The Democratic Party’s favorability ratings have been underwater for months, plunging below 30 percent in polls earlier this year by CNN and NBC News.
According to the Times report, “fewer and fewer” Americans are registering as Democrats. “In fact, for the first time since 2018, more new voters nationwide chose to be Republicans than Democrats last year,” the Times found.
