CV NEWS FEED // Democrats’ historic precedent of gaining more voters, compared with Republicans, through new voter registration ended this year in a surprising trend, Real Clear Polling reported.
Real Clear Polling found that there are significantly more new Republicans in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Between the end of September 2023 and the beginning of October 2024, Republicans in Pennsylvania gained 5,000 more new voters than Democrats did, while roughly 57,000 Pennsylvanians registered in the same time frame with a different party or as unaffiliated.
A similar trend occurred in North Carolina during the same time frame, when Democrats lost 46 registered voters and Republicans gained more than 100,000 new voters. Unaffiliated voters or new voters registered with a different party measured at almost 300,000.
Donald Trump is currently measuring slightly ahead in both swing states, with a 0.1 lead in Pennsylvania and a 0.5 lead in North Carolina.
According to Real Clear Polling, the disparity between voter registration in the Democrat and Republican parties in North Carolina might be explained by the state’s decision to wipe several hundreds of thousands of voters from its database.
“Where there are currently 2.4 million registered Democrats in North Carolina, there were 2.6 million in 2020. Comparatively, 2020 saw 2.23 million registered Republicans in North Carolina, while this year there are 2.3 million, signaling that there were likely more registered Democrats wiped from the database than registered Republicans,” Real Clear Polling noted.
Real Clear Polling also pointed out:
The views of newly registered voters do not necessarily reflect the preferences of the electorate at large, and a significant number of new voters in both states did not register with either major party. Yet the recent data flies in the face of the historical trend that newly registered voters lean Democratic because they are disproportionately young and non-white.
However, Real Clear Polling’s data also found that Harris has accrued a significant amount of support among young and non-white voters that is “greater than or on par with Biden’s in 2020.” In both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Harris has been supported by almost two-thirds of voters aged 18 to 29, while 77% of non-white voters back her in Pennsylvania and 80% of the same demographic support her in North Carolina.
According to Real Clear Polling, the support shown in the younger population makes it “difficult to say whether new voter registration statistics will significantly affect turnout among these key demographics.”
“Still, it should slightly worry Democrats that in a realm where they have historically trounced Republicans — new voter registration — support for the right seems to be growing,” Real Clear Polling concluded.