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The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging Democrats

Along Came Jones

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The Democratic party is hemorrhaging registered Democrats, that is. The really bad news for Democrats is the Republican party is gaining more registered Republicans. The source for this claim is an analysis published today by the New York Times. I found the analysis so startling that at the end of the following quote the link is gifted to make it accessible for those interested. I hope you read, reflect, comment and debate its merits.

The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.

Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.

That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

The stampede away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, the bluest states and the reddest states, too, according to a new analysis of voter registration data by The New York Times. The analysis used voter registration data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm.

Few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it — whether they register on a clipboard in a supermarket parking lot, at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in the comfort of their own home.

And fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats. -- The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis, Shane Goldmacher & Jonah Smith, The New York Times, 8/20/2025 (Gifted article)
 

This is happening to both parties, where registrations are hitting all-time lows.
 
The only reason to even HAVE party registration is for primary elections.

So I don’t find this to really be a strong metric for anything.

More and more people are registering as unaffiliated or independent - and have been for years.

I’ve changed my own registration to and from DNC to unaffiliated numerous times. If I’m unaffiliated, I can choose which primary to vote in.
 
Phys251 said:
This is happening to both parties, where registrations are hitting all-time lows.
Click to expand...

Nonsense.

 
I personally know a married couple who walked away from the Democratic Party, and became independents last year. Recently another friend is considering it.

Some prominent dem walk-aways:
Hillary Cassel expressed a desire to "build a world where our children are judged on their character and their actions not their labels."

Florida State Representative Susan Valdés is "tired of being the party of protesting when I got into politics to be part of the party of progress."

Florida State Senator Jason Pizzo "Stripping myself of the title of a party designation allows me to run free and clear, clean and transparent,"

WH Press Secretary Jean-Pierre announced she has left the party to become an independent.

Kentucky State Senator Robin Webb left, saying "The Kentucky Democratic Party has increasingly alienated lifelong rural Democrats like myself by failing to support the issues that matter most to rural Kentuckians."

DNC fundraiser Lindy Li: "It's like leaving a cult,"

The Democratic Party has completely lost its direction and purpose, and the New Guard leaders who are emerging are even worse than the Old Guard (IMO).
 
Phys251 said:
This is happening to both parties, where registrations are hitting all-time lows.
Click to expand...
Sorry, No. It is not happening to both parties.

Any hope that the drift away from the Democratic Party would end organically with Mr. Trump’s election has been dashed by the limited data so far in 2025. There are now roughly 160,000 fewer registered Democrats than on Election Day 2024, according to L2’s data, and 200,000 more Republicans.
 
Along Came Jones said:
Sorry, No. It is not happening to both parties.
Click to expand...

Wonder how many dropped a democratic affiliation out of fear of being targeted by this Administration for being a Democrat?
 

OK, I stand corrected on registration numbers, but that doesn't necessarily imply party popularity. And those are not doing well on either side of the aisle.
 
The Democratic Party definitely has issues. The only reason their candidates have had my support in the past decade is because they stood the best chance of defeating Trumpist candidates. In other words, there hasn't been much there to entice me to vote for them, only a multitude of reasons for me to vote against Trumplicans.

There has to be more to entice people than "we're not Trumpists" if they want to generate genuine brand enthusiasm.
 
trixare4kids said:
Yep. All of the above, and the 2024 election proved it in more ways than one when the Democrats lost a great deal of the working-class voters, plus nonwhite groups like Latinos and Black men, all who shifted toward Republicans.
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As noted by others, this only matters for participation in (closed) primary elections. All voters are free to vote for any candidate on the ballot in the general election.
 
It’s a vote, not a marriage proposal is a saying I tend to find highly appropriate.
 
My guess is that much of the fraudulent voting is (D) voters. That's just how they roll. The ends justify the means.
 
BirdinHand said:
Wonder how many dropped a democratic affiliation out of fear of being targeted by this Administration for being a Democrat?
Click to expand...

I am sure there are many politicians who are simply unprincipled political climbers and cowards. But for the average voter who changes their party affiliation? I think it is because they feel that the Democratic Party does not represent their interests. And I doubt that it is simply people with regressive views and feelings.

I changed my Party affiliation from Republican to Independent, and have gotten far more progressive...far more so than most Democratic politicians, but while I vote Democratic, I have no interest in joining the Democratic Party. With the Party apparatus electing leaders in the hands of big business like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Ken Martin, why would I? They have no accomplishments to their name and refuse to fight, and only talk about how much they are fighting and other vague platitudes. It seems the only way they would come out and take the fight to Trump is if Trump started attacking AIPAC or said he wanted to pass major banking regulations.
 
A good article on why. Dems need to stop bringing consensus building legislation to a gunfight.

"People like McConnell and Paul Ryan had convinced themselves ordinary Americans sat around their kitchen tables wondering which federal policies were to blame for their difficulty paying bills, and that they could exploit this discontent by scapegoating entitlements and other forms of federal support. In reality, what the median voter and the Tea Party voter had in common was a nonspecific desire to throw the bums out.

See the commonality?

Then Trump came along and gave the lie to all of it. He called himself the “king of debt.” He promised never to cut retirement programs, but ran hard against Obamacare. Under his rule, the GOP might devolve the welfare state. But it would not be as part of a bait and switch, in which empty-suited politicians feigned contempt for liberals to win conservative votes, then set about handing Medicare over to Aetna. Tormenting liberal elites, owning them, erasing the legacy of their cherished Obama—those would be primary objectives. The grassroots right’s intense antipathy to the ACA had essentially nothing to do with Hayekian ideas about prosperity and serfdom, and everything to do with their lizard-brained hatred of Obama himself.

This current leaders of the Democratic Party haven’t experienced a similar awakening. They still want to ride economic discontent to power so they can advance an agenda the public only vaguely grasps. They tell themselves that the fight their voters want is for cheaper energy, cheaper beef, cheaper health care. But mostly they just want a fight. To see Democrats do everything legal in their power to stop Trump or slow him down. The Democratic consultant class, and the pundits whose ears they bend, want desperately to avoid conflict with Trump over any issue that plays to GOP strength. They’ve fully forgotten that Republicans rose from the devastation of the Bush presidency not by ducking the Dem-coded issue of health care, but by throwing everything at it. Democratic voters want to see a similar fearlessness."

"At Least He Fights" A brief history of Donald Trump's takeover of the GOP, and what today's Democrats can learn from it.
 

Wait, Lycanthrope. What if Democrats proposed to be even more harsh enforcers of immigration laws than Republicans? Or more cruel towards trans kids than Republicans? Or more pro-Israeli genocide of the Palestinians than Republicans? Would that move the needle? If the Democrats became more Republican than Republicans?
 
BirdinHand said:
It’s a vote, not a marriage proposal is a saying I tend to find highly appropriate.
Click to expand...
That's certainly how I approach any vote (state, federal, or otherwise) and partly why I have refused a party affiliation since I left the GOP in the 90s - because good candidates can come from either party (or no party).

The Democratic Party doesn't need to woo voters so that they become rah-rah Democrats; it needs to do a better job demonstrating to voters there are reasons to vote for its candidates beyond the already accepted truth that Taco is a shit human being and an even worse POTUS.
 
That might make Trumplicans consider their candidates as more legitimate. I'm not sure about the other 2/3 of the nation.
 
 
Honestly, I care more about primary election season and my registration for local politics more than anything else.

And it’s been that way for my entire life because that’s also how and why my parents registered the way that they did.

They voted Democrat on a state and national level - but consistently voted Republican at a local level because that just happened to be the party that the individuals they liked were affiliated with (mind you - this was decades ago)

I am registered DNC currently because I work closely with my local Democratic Party at a local/county/state level. And I’m invested in their success at those levels and personally KNOW those individuals.

The federal level we can be rather shielded from, and I like it that way. Especially now.
 
Rahm Emanuel in an appearance on CNN earlier this morning commented on the New York Times analysis and took the Democratic party for not adequately addressing the economic issues faced by Americans. "People are hurting," sums up his assessment of the American political landscape which has been subordinate to other party concerns.
 
dmpi said:
My guess is that much of the fraudulent voting is (D) voters. That's just how they roll. The ends justify the means.
Click to expand...
And that includes Dems using dirty tricks and election fraud against their fellow Democrats.
 
Loulit01 said:
As bad as the Democrats are, they aren't pathologically lying traitors like the MAGA party.
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The trouble is one of messaging. The Trumplican party has a better grasp of how to win the heart and minds of a population - telling them how shitty their lives are, making them afraid of the "other," and giving them someone to blame for it/retaliate against.
 
They (Democrats) don't seem to have anyone who knows how to craft a message that resonates with a critical mass of citizens. Trump does, even as he screws them over with tariffs and grifts his way through the presidency to the tune of hundreds of millions in personal wealth gain. But none of that matters because "he talks like we do!"

That's not being derisive, it's recognizing his skill in crafting a narrative that enough people respond to even while he sets fire to the world around them.
 
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