Pruser’s conclusion was stark: “There is no cavalry coming across the hill.”
For Democrats, the attrition is everywhere. Blue bastions are bleeding voters, and key battleground states are rapidly tilting toward Republicans.
Even Democratic strongholds were not immune. New York Democrats lost more than 305,000 registered voters during that time, while California saw an eye-popping 680,000-name drop from its rolls.
Nationally, Democrats’ registration advantage over Republicans shrank from nearly 11 percentage points in 2020 to just over six points by 2024.
Most troubling of all for party strategists: more new voters registered as Republicans than Democrats last year, the first time that’s happened since 2018. In 2018, Democrats accounted for 34% of new registrations nationwide compared to just 20% for Republicans. But by 2024, the GOP had caught up — and then passed them — with 29% to Democrats’ 26%. “The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls,” the Times report concluded.
Analysts say the numbers help explain Donald Trump’s decisive 2024 victory, when he became the first Republican in 20 years to win the national popular vote. But the danger doesn’t stop there. The trend lines forecast trouble for Democrats heading into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential race. “I don’t want to say, ‘the death cycle of the Democratic Party,’” Pruser cautioned, “but there seems to be no end to this.”
Republican operatives credit a stronger ground game and clearer messaging. Sean Spicer, former Trump press secretary, told Megyn Kelly this week that the GOP has mastered both the “mechanics and the message,” while Democrats have lost touch with voters. “The Democrats don’t have either at the moment,” Spicer said. “That will prove to be impactful not just in the 2026 midterms, but in the subsequent presidential election as well.”
Even some Democrats are admitting the scale of the problem. Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine said the party squandered its once-vaunted edge in voter registration efforts.
“It’s what the party has kind of hung its hat on now going back to 2008,” he admitted, “but it turns out the Republicans have leapt so far ahead of us that we now have a serious problem.” He added that when organizers knocked doors in places like Philadelphia and Atlanta, “people would say, ‘Yes, I’m voting’ — but the problem is, it wasn’t for Kamala Harris. It was for Donald Trump.”
Mark Halperin, veteran political analyst, pointed out that Democrats ignored warning signs for too long.
“This has been going on for a long time. This is not some breaking news,” Halperin said. “It’s partly the Democrats’ ‘woke’ weakness; it’s partly Trump; but part of why this happened is the Democrats and their allies in the media live in a blue bubble. This alarm should have been pulled years ago.”
