Democrat Party Losing Membership As Mainstream Finally Sounds The Alarm Bells

By Manzanita Miller

A comprehensive New York Times report is sounding the alarm bells for Democrats ahead of important gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the 2026 midterm elections next year.  

The report, conducted by Shane Goldmacher, a political correspondent covering the Democratic Party and Jonah Smith, a data journalist, finds that Republicans have been far outpacing Democrats in terms of raw voter registration numbers since 2020. 

Goldmacher and Smith’s report, based on L2 Political’s nonpartisan voter data, finds that among the 30 states that maintain voter registration numbers by political party, Democrats lagged behind Republicans in every single state between 2020 and 2024.  

In total, the GOP added 2.4 million voters while Democrats parted ways with 2.1 million according to the report. This is a dire warning — on top of what feels like a series of similarly sober warnings this year — that the Democratic Party is failing miserably to reattract voters.     

Although the shift is most troubling to Democrats in pivotal battleground states like Arizona,  Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — all of which showed steep declines in Democratic affiliation — the shift is also taking place in blue states. California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and several other blue states have seen declines in Democratic affiliation over the past five years. On top of this, red states are becoming redder, with Idaho, Kentucky, Kansas, South Dakota, Utah and several other red states reporting significant gains in new GOP voters on top of their existing infrastructure.    

According to the Times analysis, over the past six years Republicans’ share of new voters rose by 9 percentage points while Democrats’ share plunged by almost 8 points.  

Some of the steepest declines in Democratic support have come from young and nonwhite voters, two groups that have been thorns in the side of the Democratic Party in recent elections. Many new voters are newly eligible young people who have not been registered to vote in past elections. As young people come of age and decline to join the Democratic ranks, the edge that Democrats once held among new voters is rapidly evaporating. Without new recruits, the Democratic Party is hollowing out and becoming a shell of what it once was.    

As for minority voters, the Times report mentions the “sprawling network of nonprofits”, which the Democratic Party has long relied on to register new voters in minority areas. The strategy, which once meant an influx of new mostly Democratic voters, is being turned on its head as new voters, and in particular new minority voters, register with the other party.   

Young and minority voters are increasingly siding with conservatives in election and survey data, and tend to be highly critical of the Democratic Party’s inaction on important issues like crime, the border, taxes, and inflation. 

Young, upwardly mobile Hispanics could be Democrats’ worst nightmare, according to recent survey data from a Latino activist group. A 2025 UnidosUS report found that younger, upwardly mobile Hispanic voters — those with a college degree and those in the middle to upper-middle income brackets — are the most receptive to Congressional Republicans and hold the most favorable views of President Donald Trump.

According to the survey, Congressional Republicans enjoy their highest favorability among Hispanics in the young professional cohort — Millennial voters between 30-39. 50 percent of Millennial Hispanics hold a favorable view of Congressional Republicans according to the survey.  Higher-income Hispanics also hold a substantially more favorable view of Republicans and President Trump than lower-income Hispanics. 51 percent of Hispanics with income exceeding $100K hold a positive view of the Congressional Republicans — and 48 percent hold a positive view of President Trump.   

President Trump’s America First priorities are rapidly winning over young people and Latinos, and there isn’t much Democrats can do about it. A Quantus Insights survey from Aug. 11-14 found swing voters are planning to vote for Democrats at substantially lower rates than they did in previous midterm cycles. The survey shows Democrats’ advantage over Republicans is on track to drop from 73 points in 2022 to 57 points in 2026, a sixteen-point difference. Among young people, Democrats’ advantage over Republicans is on track to drop from 28 points to 15 points. 

Democrats are in a voter registration crisis, as the party faces a record low in party approval. While Democrat nonprofits used to park themselves on college campuses and in minority neighborhoods hoping to register new voters, there is now no guarantee that those voters will vote for them. Expect an onslaught of tactics to combat these realities leading into the midterm elections: gerrymandering to cobble together Democrat-favorable districts, attempts to rapidly register illegal aliens and court them with handouts, and acts of voter suppression among groups the Democratic Party predicts will vote Republican. However, if Democrats do not adapt and offer solutions to the issues Americans care about — cost of living, the immigration crisis, rampant crime, and taxes, to name a few — the party cannot sustain itself.   

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.