This registration data is encouraging, but none of these positive R numbers are beyond the D cheat factor with fraudulent mail in ballots. Until we have clean voter rolls, ID that indicates the voter is a US citizen and in-person voting (except for rare circumstances), the fraud will continue in grand style, unfortunately. Thank you, Seth, for all your great work.
New subscriber here, intrigued and impressed by your compilations of registration data.
Could you please explain New Hampshire? You have Republicans with a substantial registration lead of 4.3% last November, yet Harris won the state by 2.8%. Are the Rs less conservative or otherwise less supportive of Trump?
How about a longer-term perspective? I see that the Democratic candidate has won 8 of the last 9 presidentials there. How does that square with registrations? Could there be some factor in NH's election procedures that has yielded a structural Democratic advantage notwithstanding registration totals?
Are there any implications for your core hypothesis that party registration determines election results? Are there any other states that show similar anomalies?
Past that, I'd like numbers and correlations over time for other battlegrounds, specifically GA, WI, and MI. Also interested in NJ, MN, MO, NM, OH and CO. We've seen some long-term flips (CO and VA to the Ds, MO & OH to the Rs), and it'd be interesting to see the anatomy of a flip.
Jim, thanks for signing up. The issue with GA WI MI MN OH is that they don’t have party registration. I have to use proxies for the battlegrounds - PA for MI, IA for WI, Duval FL for GA. It is part art and science.
Ah, yes. Makes sense. In WI, I think one factor is that Milwaukee County is not nearly as dominant as it once was, but its decline has been somewhat (but not completely) offset by Dane County's growth.
A question: when I was younger and elections were still conducted on paper, the received wisdom was that in states with closed primaries, there was a "point of no return" beyond which registration by party was no longer a useful indicator, as all the "action" was in the dominant majority party.
The extreme version was in Southern states where the GOP was for all purposes extinct--which came legally to an end in 1944 in an important Supreme Court case, Smith v. Allwright, with which I assume you are familiar.
However the basic numerical issues remained, in that registering as (say) a Democrat in rural Maine would be meaningless since the Republican candidate was the overwhelming favorite in the general election. Thus the admonition was, if you lived in such an area, you should register with the majority party, since then you would at least have some influence on the candidate of the majority party.
Of course this also applied in "open-primary" states, since--as in Virginia in the period I lived there, 1981-2020, Republicans in Northern Virginia has at least some influence in the selection of candidates in the heavily-Democratic area. Meanwhile, Democrats would flood the Republican primaries to push the candidates to the left, as was seen after John Warner replaced the deceased Richard Obenshain.
My question being...do you believe there is such a "point of no return" today? Are we starting to see people in places like Florida that were formerly Democratic--sometimes heavily so--becoming more and more Republican, not out of support for Republican policies but out of desire for greater influence on their local cadidates?
David - good to see you again - nothing is ever permanent but it appears to me that we are perhaps reaching the point of a MAJOR realignment election especially if we get elections fair again. I plan to research the topic but think 1932/36, 1980/84, are we in a 2028/32 national makeover?
There is also the possibility that we are permanently disfigured by the demographic change having occurred so rapidly and with too many different ideologies jockeying for power. One thing is for certain this is an undeniably definitive push for over a decade in the same states to the right.
I am uncertain how it will impact midterm dynamics in the closest seats.
I think this happens on a limited basis close to primaries, but am skeptical that it moves the aggregate numbers by much. That could be tested by looking at registration fluctuations before and after primaries.
Hm. I can see that dynamic as the outcome of easier methods of changing your registration in the contemporary age. But to argue that it isn't a pervasive issue ignores the history I've described.
And you are correct about fluctuations, but I am much more interested in the process as a long-term one. Since there's a cost to changing your party registration, it wouldn't be that hard to see it, either.
And as we are now well within the 60 to 90-day period within which it's no longer possible to change one's registration for the forthcoming (November 2025) elections...I though perhaps our gracious host might have something to say about it! :-)
I'm not quite sure what your argument is at this point. I'm interested in facts, not opinions, and certainly not persuasion. Also, my initial inquiry was dedicated at our host. So at this point I'll wait till he responds.
If at that point you have something you believe to be useful to add, I'll be interested. But at this point you appear to want to drag me down a rabbit-hole, the existence of which is agreed, an exercise for which I am too enfeebled.
Question: How would the election map look if the electoral college system was used at the state level? It’s so typical for a state to have a vast majority of counties tally red, but the population centers in the one or two counties that routinely vote blue, dwarf the rest of the state, and thus tilt the entire state that way.
Someone can feel free to correct me, but I think the Supreme Court's 60+ year old "one man, one vote" decision precludes electoral college-style systems within states. I confess not having actually read the decision, so I'm easily corrected with specific citations of the case, whose name I don't even know.
Really appreciate the data you provide Seth. I'd like to think "trend is your friend" as the saying goes. Living in Wa State it can feel like a significant up hill climb from here as we watch our state government leadership from the top to bottom continue to push any all punitive measures to wreck our state. It's going to take the state to hit bottom...before anything changes.
This red trend gives me hope that as time goes on, more and more people are waking up.
This registration data is encouraging, but none of these positive R numbers are beyond the D cheat factor with fraudulent mail in ballots. Until we have clean voter rolls, ID that indicates the voter is a US citizen and in-person voting (except for rare circumstances), the fraud will continue in grand style, unfortunately. Thank you, Seth, for all your great work.
New subscriber here, intrigued and impressed by your compilations of registration data.
Could you please explain New Hampshire? You have Republicans with a substantial registration lead of 4.3% last November, yet Harris won the state by 2.8%. Are the Rs less conservative or otherwise less supportive of Trump?
How about a longer-term perspective? I see that the Democratic candidate has won 8 of the last 9 presidentials there. How does that square with registrations? Could there be some factor in NH's election procedures that has yielded a structural Democratic advantage notwithstanding registration totals?
Are there any implications for your core hypothesis that party registration determines election results? Are there any other states that show similar anomalies?
Past that, I'd like numbers and correlations over time for other battlegrounds, specifically GA, WI, and MI. Also interested in NJ, MN, MO, NM, OH and CO. We've seen some long-term flips (CO and VA to the Ds, MO & OH to the Rs), and it'd be interesting to see the anatomy of a flip.
Jim, thanks for signing up. The issue with GA WI MI MN OH is that they don’t have party registration. I have to use proxies for the battlegrounds - PA for MI, IA for WI, Duval FL for GA. It is part art and science.
Ah, yes. Makes sense. In WI, I think one factor is that Milwaukee County is not nearly as dominant as it once was, but its decline has been somewhat (but not completely) offset by Dane County's growth.
A question: when I was younger and elections were still conducted on paper, the received wisdom was that in states with closed primaries, there was a "point of no return" beyond which registration by party was no longer a useful indicator, as all the "action" was in the dominant majority party.
The extreme version was in Southern states where the GOP was for all purposes extinct--which came legally to an end in 1944 in an important Supreme Court case, Smith v. Allwright, with which I assume you are familiar.
However the basic numerical issues remained, in that registering as (say) a Democrat in rural Maine would be meaningless since the Republican candidate was the overwhelming favorite in the general election. Thus the admonition was, if you lived in such an area, you should register with the majority party, since then you would at least have some influence on the candidate of the majority party.
Of course this also applied in "open-primary" states, since--as in Virginia in the period I lived there, 1981-2020, Republicans in Northern Virginia has at least some influence in the selection of candidates in the heavily-Democratic area. Meanwhile, Democrats would flood the Republican primaries to push the candidates to the left, as was seen after John Warner replaced the deceased Richard Obenshain.
My question being...do you believe there is such a "point of no return" today? Are we starting to see people in places like Florida that were formerly Democratic--sometimes heavily so--becoming more and more Republican, not out of support for Republican policies but out of desire for greater influence on their local cadidates?
David - good to see you again - nothing is ever permanent but it appears to me that we are perhaps reaching the point of a MAJOR realignment election especially if we get elections fair again. I plan to research the topic but think 1932/36, 1980/84, are we in a 2028/32 national makeover?
There is also the possibility that we are permanently disfigured by the demographic change having occurred so rapidly and with too many different ideologies jockeying for power. One thing is for certain this is an undeniably definitive push for over a decade in the same states to the right.
I am uncertain how it will impact midterm dynamics in the closest seats.
I think this happens on a limited basis close to primaries, but am skeptical that it moves the aggregate numbers by much. That could be tested by looking at registration fluctuations before and after primaries.
Hm. I can see that dynamic as the outcome of easier methods of changing your registration in the contemporary age. But to argue that it isn't a pervasive issue ignores the history I've described.
And you are correct about fluctuations, but I am much more interested in the process as a long-term one. Since there's a cost to changing your party registration, it wouldn't be that hard to see it, either.
And as we are now well within the 60 to 90-day period within which it's no longer possible to change one's registration for the forthcoming (November 2025) elections...I though perhaps our gracious host might have something to say about it! :-)
I can ALWAYS be persuaded by data as long as it's not cherry picked.
I'm not quite sure what your argument is at this point. I'm interested in facts, not opinions, and certainly not persuasion. Also, my initial inquiry was dedicated at our host. So at this point I'll wait till he responds.
If at that point you have something you believe to be useful to add, I'll be interested. But at this point you appear to want to drag me down a rabbit-hole, the existence of which is agreed, an exercise for which I am too enfeebled.
Let's go Florida!
Question: How would the election map look if the electoral college system was used at the state level? It’s so typical for a state to have a vast majority of counties tally red, but the population centers in the one or two counties that routinely vote blue, dwarf the rest of the state, and thus tilt the entire state that way.
If it were used proportionally, Texas at 56% Trump in 40 electoral votes would yield a 22/18 split R/D.
Then there would be the options like Maine or Nebraska, one vote per Congressional District won.
Races would be much tighter.
Someone can feel free to correct me, but I think the Supreme Court's 60+ year old "one man, one vote" decision precludes electoral college-style systems within states. I confess not having actually read the decision, so I'm easily corrected with specific citations of the case, whose name I don't even know.
Is there any hope that we may see more Thomas Massie or Rand Paul caliber Republicans?
We need Republicans that do not approve of making their grandchildren debt slaves.
Your tracking of this information is very valuable. Thank you.
Really appreciate the data you provide Seth. I'd like to think "trend is your friend" as the saying goes. Living in Wa State it can feel like a significant up hill climb from here as we watch our state government leadership from the top to bottom continue to push any all punitive measures to wreck our state. It's going to take the state to hit bottom...before anything changes.
Do we have any data on that one district in Nebraska?
Keep up the great work with these posts, Cap'n K! Hopefully in your spare time as you pick up more contract work!