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Kamala Harris may be leading Donald Trump in many national polls, but a look under the hood at Democrats’ operations tells a less rosy story for the party. A new TIME analysis of voter registration data in four pivotal states finds reasons for Democrats to worry and Republicans to puff up their chests. The data suggest that Democrats in the Biden era may have frittered away advantages in states they need to win.
In the four swing states that make it easy to track political alignment in voter registrations—Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania—Democrats have seen their slice of the overall pie shrink.
In must-win Pennsylvania, Democrats have their slimmest voter registration advantage in decades. In the last four years, Democratic registrations in the state have gone from a safe seven-point advantage to now hanging ahead by fewer than four points. Polling in the state shows Harris leading Trump by a lonely point while the Democratic Senate nominee runs ahead by five. Biden carried it by just 1 percentage point in 2020. (But it’s worth noting: in the wake of Biden’s exit, Pennsylvania Democrats saw their best week of new voter registrations since 2023. It has, however, leveled off.)
In Arizona, Democrats have lost more than 2 points of their ground against Republicans from four years ago among registered voters. Republicans’ gains have been admittedly negligible. But the big tell here is the surge in people registered to vote since 2020: a solid 5% gain in the voter rolls between Aug. 4, 2020, and July 30, 2024, with more of those new voters registering with the GOP. That fundamentally remakes the campaign universe in a state that was always a stretch for Democrats. Polling shop FiveThirtyEight has Trump up by more than 1 point in their aggregate of surveys while the Democrat running for the Senate seat is up by 7…
