GOP gains in voter registration raise red flags for Democrats

Republican gains in voter registration are raising red flags for Democrats in key states, underscoring the inroads the GOP made across the country in 2024.

Active registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats in battleground Nevada for the first time in nearly two decades, according to January data from the state. The GOP has also gained recent ground in New Jersey, a traditionally blue state, and Trump this week celebrated that the voter registration majority in Florida’s Hillsborough county switched from blue to red. 

The latest shifts, following eroding Democratic registration in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona last year, underscore the work that lies ahead for Democrats as they look to rebuild and retake power in Washington. 

“People switch the way they vote, then they switch their registrations. And you think about Nevada and New Jersey, those are two states that saw pretty significant shifts towards the Republicans in November,” said Marc Meredith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. 

The exact factors behind changing registration numbers vary between states, and not every state counts its voters by party, Meredith noted. But the changes in Nevada and elsewhere largely reflect the voter behavior seen last fall, when Trump swept the battlegrounds and improved on his 2020 margins across the board, including in blue strongholds, as most of the country moved rightward. 

Shortly after former President Biden carried Nevada back in 2020, Democrats in the state were recorded at around 655,000 active registered voters in January 2021, compared to 576,000 Republicans and around 436,000 nonpartisan voters. 

But by the end of January 2025, on the heels of Trump’s 2024 win, active registered Democrats were at 618,352 — just a hair behind Republicans’ 618,539, with another 696,000 non-partisans. 

“This historic achievement is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and unwavering commitment of Republicans across our great state,” the Nevada GOP said in a statement on overtaking Democrats’ numbers. 

Some chalk up the changes to the Silver State’s relatively new automatic voter registration system, pointing to the big uptick in nonpartisan voters. And a registration for one party doesn’t necessarily guarantee a vote for the same, as many Nevadans are split-ticket voters: though Trump won, the Democrat prevailed in the state’s competitive Senate race. 

But together with Trump’s victory, the registration figures add to signs of an uphill climb for Democrats in the years ahead.

“It’s less remarkable that the Republicans and Democrats are kind of in a race, because those numbers are still relatively low compared to the number of nonpartisan voters that are coming on the rolls in Nevada,” said Nevada-based Democratic strategist Annette Magnus.

But, she added, Democrats still “need to be doing more voter registration and upping their game” when it comes to reaching those nonpartisan registrants before Republicans do. 

Democrats also saw some voter registration red flags in critical swing states ahead of Election Day last year.

While Democrats outnumber Republicans in Pennsylvania registrations, the GOP has narrowed the gap in recent years. All but three of the Keystone State’s 67 counties have seen Republicans net registered voters since 2015, just before Trump’s first win, according to a January report from the Center for Politics.

“And when you look at the people who showed up to vote in November, there were more people with the Republican registration who voted than Democratic registration,” Meredith said of Pennsylvania, suggesting that signals more of a rightward shift to come.  

“I would not be at all surprised if we eventually reach a spot in Pennsylvania like Nevada, where at some point we have more registered Republicans here than registered Democrats.”

Republicans in Arizona have roughly doubled their advantage over the last four years, from an edge of around 140,000 active voters in January 2021 to more than 300,000 last month.

In North Carolina, Democrats were roughly 322,000 ahead in registration tallies in early Feb. 2021, but Republicans have shrunk that edge to just 37,500 as of the start of this month. 

And it’s not just battlegrounds where Republicans are seeing inroads. 

Nationally, Democrats had a 5-point edge over Republicans in registered voters across the board in the run-up to the 2020 election, per survey data from Pew Research last year, but that partisan divide shrunk to just 1 point ahead of 2024.

In the blue stronghold of New Jersey, Republicans gained 10,000 voters and Democrats lost 2,000 in January, according to calculations from the New Jersey Globe. Democrats still hold an edge of nearly 1 million registrants, but the gap is smaller than at this point four years ago. 

“What we're seeing in New Jersey is kind of a microcosm of what is going on nationally,” said New Jersey-based Democratic strategist Henry de Koninck. 

“There's a bit of a realignment happening in terms of working class voters away from Democrats and towards the Republican Party. There’s slippage with young voters away from Democrats and towards Republicans. And the Democratic Party is at a multi-decade low in terms of popularity,” de Konick said. “And that’s being reflected in our registration.” 

The Democratic registration drop seen last month comes after Trump made unexpected inroads in the Garden State in November, outperforming his 2020 margin there.

New Jersey voters will weigh in this fall on their off-year gubernatorial race, and Republicans are optimistic about their chances of flipping the office on the heels of the unexpectedly close presidential race. 

“The Democratic Party is in a tough spot here, and we're going to need to kind of reimagine the way that we brand ourselves as a party, the way that we address the needs and concerns of voters. We're going to be in for some tough cycles here in the near term.” 

Experts on both sides of the aisle, though, stressed that registration to a given party doesn’t guarantee a vote for that party, meaning neither side can rest on registration numbers alone. 

“I'm enthused that we are having these positive increases in registration. But a registered voter doesn't mean an automatic voter,” said New Jersey-based Republican strategist Alex Zdan. “That cannot be lost on anyone: that it's not just a registration issue, that it is a motivation issue.”

Over in Florida, which voted for both of former President Obama’s bids but has since grown increasingly red, Republicans now narrowly edge out Democrats in Hillsborough County with 301,967 active voters to 301,337 across the aisle. Trump touted the flip on Truth Social this week as “another very big and successful” win for the party in the Sunshine State. 

Florida Democrats countered that Trump’s announcement is “a premature victory lap,” noting that the Hillsborough announcement includes only active registered voters.

But that doesn’t mean Democrats are shrugging off the registration numbers. Though the party led in statewide active voter registration until 2021, Republicans have since grown to have an edge of more than 1 million, as of data collected at the end of November. 

“We as Democrats have moved away from partisan voter registration, not just in Florida, but across the country, and the Democratic ecosystem has woken up and said: This has not and does not work. We've got to put the resources back into the state parties to be doing the active voter registration,” Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, told The Hill. 

“November was a wake up call of how we as Democrats operate, the structures that we invest in. It really has been a wake up call.”