More Voters Deciding They’d Rather Be Called Anything But A Democrat

A growing share of Americans are ditching the Democratic Party as it suffers one of its sharpest decline in voter affiliation in decades, a new NBC News analysis shows.

Between 2024 and 2025 alone, Democrats experienced one of their most severe year-over-year losses, dropping 1.3 percentage points in registered voter share, according to a recent NBC News analysis of data compiled by Ballotpedia across 33 states and Washington, D.C. The trend reflects mounting disillusionment among Democrats and the turmoil within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) following the party’s devastating loss to President Donald Trump in 2024.

Democrats’ registration numbers have dropped nearly every year since 2000, except during former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, the analysis found. In 2000, Democrats represented 43.8% of registered voters, but today, that number has fallen to 37%.

Republicans have also seen a decline, although less severe, dropping from 32.8% to 30.9% since 2000, according to the analysis. In contrast, independent and third-party affiliations increased from 23.4% to 32%.

“The parties need to do something more than just win the next election. They need to build a structure for the future,” Christopher Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina University in North Carolina, told NBC News. “They’re not telling people why membership has its privileges. I think they need to be aware of this, or else they’re going to have a real problem in the future.”

The shift in party affiliation was also reflected in exit polls from the 2024 presidential election, which indicated that, for the first time, self-identified independents outnumbered Democrats and matched Republicans.