The Patriot Post® · The Democrats are Bleeding Voters

Is there any more awful brand out there than that of the Democrat Party? Voter registration data analyzed by the Associated Press shows that more than one million voters in 43 states have switched their party affiliation to Republican over the last 12 months. This accounts for a stunning two-thirds of all party switchers.

A voter migration of this magnitude should make the opposition nervous. Even worse news for Democrats: These GOP gains are particularly prevalent in the nation’s suburbs, which may help Republicans recover lost ground from the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.

Republicans boosted their share of party changers in 168 of 235 fringe suburban counties in the swing states of Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The GOP also saw gains in 62% of medium metro counties in Democrat-run California and Colorado, and they captured 63% of party switchers in Democrat-run Pennsylvania.

Two drivers are pushing Democrat voters into the Republican camp. One is the Republican voters who left the GOP during the Trump era but have returned. Another is Democrat voters who are fed up with how far to the left their party has drifted. As one such voter told the AP, “The party itself is no longer Democrat, it’s progressive socialism.”

We should note that some Democrats have switched parties simply to create mischief — to vote in Republican primaries. An ostensible example of this was the primary defeat of first-term Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina’s 11th District. The Washington Post reported a spike in Democrats switching their status to “unaffiliated,” allowing them to vote in the Republican primary and thereby contributing to Cawthorn’s 1,384-vote defeat by “establishment” Republican Chuck Edwards.

Democrat Party leaders, and apparently The Washington Post, are encouraging Democrat voters to switch their affiliation in states with semi-closed systems in which only registered party members can vote in their primaries. The hope is to get enough outside voters to sway key Republican primaries in the Democrats’ favor by supporting fringy GOP candidates seen as weaker general-election opponents in November.

It’s hard to know if this sort of desperate tactic will work on a wide scale, but it’s doubtful that it has had any substantial impact on the spike in switches to the Republican Party.

Will the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs ruling save Democrats? Like the case itself, there’s no shortage of opinions on the matter. Democrats by and large believe the overturning of Roe v. Wade will motivate their base. They’re certainly playing it that way. Anything to get the public’s mind off of $5-a-gallon gas and baby formula shortages.

Some political strategists say the economy is still the number one concern among voters. That’s unlikely to change unless the economy miraculously improves by November. As Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who studies swing voters, notes, “If you think that the overturning of Roe is just going to overturn the dynamics of 2022, I’m not sure that that’s true.”

With the abortion issue now returned to the states, there’s no reason to believe Republicans will be any less motivated to turn out in November than Democrats, who now face an intra-party schism. The far left of the party favors court-packing, filibuster elimination, and any trick it can pull to get its way. Traditional Democrats, though, like the voter quoted earlier, may not support far-left candidates who advocate such efforts. And hard-left voters may not support traditional Democrat candidates unless they do. Republicans, however, seem united and energized about November.

Either way you slice it, the Democrats have problems.