Voter Registration Switches Suggest Problems for GOP

February 8, 2021

Program Note: I will be live-tweeting the impeachment trial starting tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter at @robbsmithideas.

“It could also represent the tip of a much larger iceberg.”

The Hill, January 27, 2021

The GOP seems to be in crisis – or at least having a very difficult time trying to live with the Frankenstein’s Monster they all created together over the past 50+ years. The last year (and especially the last two months) seems to have been the final straw for a lot of Republicans. While we have seen some high-profile Republicans leave the party, there also seems to be something amiss among rank-and-file voters.

In the first month of this year, just four states saw tens of thousands of Republicans change their voter registrations. This includes more than 10,000 in Arizona, 6,000 in North Carolina, 4,000 in Colorado, and 12,000 in Pennsylvania. Additionally, in just three counties in the Tampa Bay (FL) area 2,000 voters switched away from the GOP. Far fewer Democrats are switching parties. In fact, it appears that the switch rate of Democrats is no more than normal in a post-election period in these states. In the three Tampa Bay area counties, only 306 Democrats switched their party registration in January.

To understand the phenomena better, let’s take a deeper look at one electorally-important state: Pennsylvania. The data for the discussion below can be found here. The calculations are (mostly) mine.

During the period 2008-2020 over 600,000 voters in Pennsylvania changed their registration to Democrat while over 700,000 changed to Republican. Just under 300,000 of the voters gained by the Democratic Party came from Republicans, while 500,000 new Republicans were formerly Democrats. Overall, the trend was more Democrats switching to the GOP than the reverse – but not by as much as some assumed during this period. So far in 2021, 7,764 Republicans have changed their voter registration to something other than Democrat and 4,640 have switched to the Democratic Party.

Overall, 12,404 Keystone State Republicans have left the party. By comparison, 2,956 Democrats have switched to the GOP and 1,798 have switched to another designation (for a total of 4,754, less than the number of Republicans that switched to the Democratic Party alone). This means that the number of Republicans changing registrations in 2021 is 260% higher than that of Democrats in the Keystone State.*

What's interesting about the number of switches is that people don't typically change their registration until they need to - which means approaching elections, not afterwards. According to Michael McDonald, a voting and elections expert at the University of Florida: “Usually, absent a primary election that would induce people to switch parties so that they could participate in that primary, you don’t see much activity in party registration.” Because of the way voter registrations are reported around the country (see Note below) it is difficult to get a complete picture of what is going on. However, the states we can get very recent data for are important electoral states that have recently moved from red to purple to blue (Colorado), red to purple (Arizona and North Carolina), and blue to purple (Pennsylvania). Colorado might be the only one we can call solidly blue at this point (although it’s a light blue).

The changes in registration represent very small percentages of overall voter registrations in either party. However, according to McDonald: “Prior to the election, the trend was in the opposite direction, there were more Republicans that were registering. It’s not just like it’s a little blip, it’s also a blip in a different direction than we’ve seen in previous years.” So, despite the relatively small amount of voters we see switching parties it is important to remember that this data is for just a few weeks and that the size and direction of the movement is not only indicative of real underlying political change but represents a change in direction of party registration from the past decade or so.

We do not really know what this means yet, so I am working with this hypothesis. Let's say this number of registration switches is higher than normal (and it is much higher than Democratic switches being reported in the same time period), then that probably tells us something about what's going on more generally. I would assume that more people who are turning their backs on the GOP would not change their registrations because it's not something anyone does until they have to (as Professor McDonald notes above). It makes zero difference to your average voter until you want to draw a specific primary ballot. So, if the 30,000 figure in these jurisdictions is abnormal, then we might assume that the number of Republican voters "leaving" the party is actually quite a bit higher. After a few months when more data is available from other states, we should re-examine this hypothesis in a follow-up post.

In the meantime, there appears to be a very real movement of registered voters away from the Republican Party. Most are landing as independents, but more Republicans are choosing to become Democrats than vice versa. The trend could be a temporary reaction to the participation or reaction of many Republican officials in the January 6th coup attempt, or it could be the beginning of a longer trend of moderate GOP votes abandoning what they probably view now as an extremist party.

Note on data sources

The voter registration data in this post is that which was currently available as late as February 5, 2021.

Only a few states report changes of registration from one party to another and voter registration data by week. Most simply report registration status by month, and it is not unusual for there to be a lag time before reports are made public. For instance, the most recent publicly-available voter registration for Massachusetts is dated October 24, 2020 and it can only be downloaded in the PDF format (although the state does have a decent interactive tool for election results, although the technology is somewhat dated).

Nineteen (19) states do not register voters by party. Among those we might be interested in understanding better are Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. We won’t get a good understanding of how voters have moved away from the GOP in those states until we have polling on the question – or until we see actual election returns from those states.

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* Overall, there have been 20,756 applications for new or changed voter registrations. From all of these voter registrations (new and changed), the Democratic Party has increased its membership by 7,670 while the GOP has seen an increase of 2,398. The remainder went to other designations. Both parties memberships are growing, but in a change from recent years, Democrats are now outpacing Republicans.