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Much has been written about the gains Republicans made in registering new voters in the years leading up to Election Day 2024. What’s not as well known is that the GOP surge has continued in the 10 months since then. It’s a remarkable political development given that President Donald Trump is muddling along with approval ratings that according to RealClearPolitics are only slightly better than those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama at this stage of their rocky second terms. Tradition holds that next year should be rough for the president’s party in midterm elections, when voters typically seek to check the White House by handing control of one or both houses of Congress to the opposition. But the GOP’s registration honeymoon hasn’t ended yet, and Democrats still haven’t figured out how to court available voters. There is also a growing trend in many states of people registering to vote without a partisan affiliation, which should serve as a warning to both Republicans and Democrats. Among the two major parties, one has been enjoying a clear recent edge. Steve Kornacki reports for NBC: Not every state registers voters by party. But there are 28 that do and that have both current and historical numbers available for comparison. And in these states, Republicans have slashed a long-standing Democratic registration edge by more than 1 million just since last year’s election. This is a far cry from Trump’s first term, when the net shift to the GOP between the 2016 and 2018 elections was barely 100,000.
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