D Registration Decline

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.

 Shane Goldmacher with Jonah Smith at NYT:

The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.

Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.

That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

The stampede away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, the bluest states and the reddest states, too, according to a new analysis of voter registration data by The New York Times. The analysis used voter registration data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm. 

 

The Taylor Swift Effect

Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.  And in just a few weeks, the race has changed. 

 Maggie Astor at NYT:

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and her call for her fans to vote drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter registration resources.

Her post on Instagram included a link to Vote.gov, a website run by two federal agencies, the General Services Administration and the Election Assistance Commission. About 406,000 people clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Ms. Swift posted it, according to a spokeswoman for the G.S.A.

That link accounted for more than half of the roughly 727,000 visitors Vote.gov received from Tuesday to Wednesday. The remainder was likely driven by the debate itself. Last week, from Sept. 3-9, the site received an average of about 30,000 visitors per day, according to the agency.

Vote.gov serves as a clearinghouse that directs prospective voters to their state’s registration website. Since people cannot register to vote directly on the site, it is not possible to determine how many of the people who clicked the link also registered.

Email from CA GOP

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

The California GOP has fallen on hard times and is trying to pump up registration and build up its database.

From the California GOP:

Rejecting Trump's Voter Fraud Panel

CNN reports:

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration's election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states.

State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation -- from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which President Donald Trump created by executive order in May, sent a letter to all 50 states last Wednesday requesting a bevy of voter data, which he notes will eventually be made available to the public.

The order came months after Trump claimed without evidence that millions had voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. When states began to express concerns about the legality of his administration's efforts to investigate voter fraud, Trump called them out on Twitter on Saturday, questioning whether they were hiding something.

 "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?" Trump tweeted.

Turnout in 2016, Uncompetitive House Races

A release from Nonprofit VOTE:

With election results finally certified by state election offices, Nonprofit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project release “America Goes to The Polls,” a report that ranks all 50 states in voter turnout for the 2016 election and identifies policies that help contribute to higher turnout.

• National turnout of eligible voters was 60.2% – 1.6 percentage points above the 58.6% turnout in 2012, though slightly lower than 2008. Four in ten eligible voters did not vote.
• The highest turnout states were Minnesota (74.8%), Maine (72.8%), New Hampshire (72.5%), Colorado (72.1%), Wisconsin (70.5%), and Iowa (69.0%). All six offered same day voter registration, enabling voters to register or update their registration when they vote. Five were battleground states targeted by the presidential campaigns.
• The lowest turnout states were Hawaii (43%), West Virginia (50.8%), Texas (51.6%), Tennessee (52.0%) and Arkansas (53.1%). These five states were at the bottom for the third consecutive presidential election. None were battleground states. All five cut off the ability to register or update a registration three to four weeks before Election Day.

“We continue to see higher voter participation in states with same day registration even as four additional states adopted the policy.” said Dr. Michael McDonald, Director of the U.S. Elections Project. “The data shows clearly that same day registration is one of most effective strategies states can implement to increase turnout and help more voters participate.”

The report also highlights new data on the low level of electoral competition in both the presidential race and House races – a major contributor to low voter turnout in non-competitive states and districts.

• 147 million (65%) of the nation’s eligible voters live in non-battleground states where the outcome is largely a foregone conclusion. The major presidential candidates understand this and thus invested less than 10% of their ad spending and campaign visits on reaching those voters.
• Competition for U.S. House races hit its lowest mark in at least 30 years. Just 33 House races ended with margin of victory between the top two candidates of 10% points or less. Most House races (74%) were landslides or uncontested.

The report features a range of state policies to promote voter participation and improve the voting process such as same day voter registration, automatic and online voter registration, as well as policies that could increase competition, such as Electoral College reform and nonpartisan redistricting.

“Voter participation is at the core of active citizenship and a healthy democracy,” said Brian Miller, Executive Director of Nonprofit VOTE. “This report offers the reader an opportunity to learn from the practical experience of policies already enacted in many states to promote voting, encourage healthy competition, and improve election integrity.”

To download America Goes to the Polls 2016, visit www.americagoestothepolls.org.
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California Registration Numbers

Compare the California voter registration numbers for July 7 and September 9:

................................Democratic ...Republican... No Party Preference

July 7.......................8,155,831.....4,898,389.....4,212,484

Sept 9......................8,251,570......4,888,719.....4,267,218

• Democratic registration went up by 95,739 
• NPP registration went up by 24,734 
• Republican registration went down by 9,670 

To the extent that voter enthusiasm drove these numbers, the passion was strongly on the Democratic side. California Republicans have a steep mountain to climb, and Trump has made it even steeper.

Unregistered in California

In 2012, 65.6 percent of voting age citizens in California were registered to vote.  Only six states had lower registration rates for citizens: Arkansas, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and Hawaii.  Jim Sanders reports at The Sacramento Bee:

In a chronic phenomenon of under-enfranchisement in the Golden State, there are at least 6.4 million residents who are eligible to vote but were not on the registration rolls as of early April. California’s registration rate is close to last in the United States, and its legions of eligible but unregistered voters make up a disproportionate share of the nationwide total.

Experts say there are multiple reasons for the shortfall, such as residents here moving more often, bureaucratic hurdles and uncompetitive statewide contests that fail to capture the public’s attention. Whatever the causes, the result is the same: an electorate that is whiter, older and wealthier than the state as a whole and a large share of the population disengaged from the laws and representatives chosen in its name.

“It’s a particularly big problem – there’s a big difference between people who vote and the people who don’t vote in California,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Election Law Battles

In a tight race, legal battles over voter identification, registration purges, early voting, provisional ballots, and the like could mean a dramatic series of post-election court battles. The New York Times reports:

“In any of these states there is the potential for disaster,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “You have close elections and the real possibility that people will say their votes were not counted when they should have been. That’s the nightmare scenario for the day after the election.”

Bloomberg reports:

Iowa’s secretary of state was temporarily barred from issuing new rules on purging noncitizens from voter registration rolls by a judge who said the process was likely to create confusion for legitimate voters.

Secretary of State Matt Schultz, a Republican, can’t claim that the public interest justified his use of emergency rule- making procedures governing elections, Polk County District Court Judge Mary Pat Gunderson in Des Moines said, granting a motion for a temporary injunction.
“They have created fear that new citizens will lose their right to vote and/or be charged with a felony, and caused some qualified voters to feel deterred from even registering,” Gunderson said in her 12-page ruling.

The lawsuit is among multiple court battles over voting rules in states, particularly so-called swing states including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where both Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns see possible victories.

At least two lawsuits challenging a proposed voter purge are pending in Florida. Voter cases are also under way in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. In Pennsylvania, the stateSupreme Court is deciding whether to allow to the state to enforce a law requiring voters to have photo identification, which the American Civil Liberties Union has argued was aimed at keeping likely Democratic voters away from the polls.

More from the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Independents in Swing States

From a new report by Third Way:

American Crossroads and The List

At Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg reports on discussions about the RNC's extensive voter files:

Multiple Republican sources said that a number of prominent GOP strategists and operatives are trying to persuade the RNC’s leadership to end the party’s monopoly of the list by creating an arrangement whereby a new, non-party group could have access to the list in exchange for improving it.

Among those Republicans said to be pushing for the move are former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, former White House Political Director Karl Rove and Barry Jackson, a top aide to Speaker John Boehner (Ohio).

Duncan, who is chairman of the board of American Crossroads, one of the non-party groups credited with helping Republicans win the House last year, adamantly opposed the move when he chaired the RNC but now favors it. Rove is also heavily involved in American Crossroads.

Numerous former RNC staffers described the voter file as the committee’s “greatest asset” and argued that by giving up control of the file, which the RNC shares with state parties, the committee would be agreeing to diminish its power dramatically.

Others downplayed the risk, arguing that the RNC must never and will never “give up the list” but can allow private entities access to it. The more the list is used, they argued, the more it would be “refreshed.” And, they added, only the parties can pay for federal get-out-the-vote efforts, thereby guaranteeing the RNC an important role in campaigns.

Michigan Roll

The Michigan primary, which proved a headache for the Democratic Party and a hollow victory for Senator Clinton, has been a bonanza for a political consulting firm. State voters do not register by party, so it is hard to reckon the partisan preferences of individuals. Alan Grebner solved the problem by painstakingly examining who voted on which side. The Detroit Free Press reports: "His goal was to identify the party affiliation of voters who participated in the primary and sell the data to political campaigns, which prize such critical information. For about 1.43 million-- or 97% -- of the voters, he was successful."