DATA: Voter Registration Trends Favor Republicans Bigly
Larry Schweikart
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An ongoing analysis of voter registration trends since November 2016—the election of Donald Trump—continues to show significant trends toward Republicans almost across the board. A couple of notes on the data are necessary:
- In many cases—almost all except Arizona and Delaware—the total number of registered Democrats and Republicans both has fallen. This is normal. Secretaries of State purge voter rolls of those who have moved, died, or asked to be removed from the rolls. The baseline month is November 2016, but some states have not updated up to September. I used the most recent date in these cases. Pennsylvania’s data has still not been updated from May, but I’ll include it anyway.
- New Jersey was the only state to show one party declining (the Democrats) and the other gaining (the Republicans, though only by 287 voters).
- Unfortunately MI, WI, OH, MN, VA, GA, and TX do not register voters by party, so tracking these states is not possible. Once some of them—such as OH—have primaries, a comparison to previous primary turnout would be beneficial.
So here we go:
AZ Rs net gain +11,314. Both parties saw solid gains, but since November Republicans have added 24,918 to their rolls!
CO D net +20 Along with Delaware, CO is the only state to show a Democrat gain. However, earlier in the year the gains were much stronger, meaning that the Republicans have significantly cut into the CO Democrats’ lead.
DE Ds net +365 Both parties saw gains. The only state other than CO I looked at with a net Democrat gain.
FL Rs net +55,498 This is very important. Though both were down, the Democrats were off 80,000. Moreover, FL has shown increasing Republican gains every month, averaging just under 6,000 net advantage increase per month.
IA Rs net + 14,363 Another state where the Republican advantage has continued to grow month by month.
ME Rs net +1,201 while not a large gap, the Republicans don’t need much to win ME in 2020, with only a 23,000 vote difference.
NC Rs +60,918 Like Florida, NC has shown a steadily widening gap since November. Democrats have lost a shocking 80,000 off their rolls.
NH Rs net +6,511 Given that Trump lost this state by only 2,700 votes, again this is a significant gain.
NJ Rs +22,351 This was a shocker as well, given that the Republicans gained 287 voters while the Democrats lost 22,065.
NM Rs +12,810 up by about 2,000 since I looked about two months ago.
NV Rs +19, 799 Again, another state where month by month the net gains by the Republicans continue to grow.
PA Rs +101,000 and as I said above, these numbers are from May and I have reported them before. But still . . . .
In short, Democrats saw the trend in their direction in only one state (DE) and even where they had a net gain (CO), it had fallen from previous months. While one or two states might be exceptions or quixotic, the same cannot be said for a sample of twelve battleground states. This represents a net gain by Republicans across these states of over 290,000 votes. As I have said in previous columns, these numbers suggest if the election were held today, Trump would win all the electoral votes he carried in 2016 and add New Hampshire, and probably Maine and New Mexico. But other states are rapidly coming in to play.
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