GOP Will 'Absolutely Love' These Voter Registration Stats

Republicans are eating away at the Democrats' voter registration advantage, which could be enough to put their candidate in the White House, according to CNN's Harry Enten. "If you want a stat that Republicans absolutely love, it's this one," the senior data reporter said Sunday as he broke down voter registration data for Pennsylvania. In 2020, 47% of registered voters in the state identified as Democrats, while 39% identified as Republicans. Today, Democrats' lead has been cut in half. Now, 44% of registered voters identify as Democrats, compared to 40% as Republicans. Republicans are "picking up ground in the areas you'd expect: noncollege white-dominated areas, coal country in the northeast, southwest outside of Pittsburgh," said Enten.

But this isn't just about Pennsylvania. Democrats' voter registration advantage has also fallen in the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. Across Nevada, for example, "Democrats are down about 300,000 voters [from 2020] and Republicans are up about 70,000," Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research, tells the Hill. In North Carolina, the advantage has shrunk from 393,000 voters in 2020, when former President Trump took the state, to about 130,000 this year, according to David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University's Political Research Center. Some strategists note more voters are registering as unaffiliated, and these voters are likely to support Harris over Trump.

But Republicans also lead by a point when it comes to party identification. They're "doing even better than the average when they win," Enten said, per RealClearPolitics, noting Democrats have led by eight points on average in terms of party identification during elections they've won, and by three points during elections they've lost. Still, the data guru argued Tuesday that white women could deliver a win to Vice President Kamala Harris, per Fox News. Though the Democratic candidate isn't drawing the same support from white men, or from men and women of color, as President Biden did in 2020, she's doing far better with white women, who make up 36% of the electorate, Enten said. He added Trump holds just a 1-point advantage among this group, the worst for a GOP candidate this century. (More Election 2024 stories.)