The Democratic Party has largely been bleeding voters since the 2020 election cycle — while the GOP has been gaining over the same time period, according to an analysis from the New York Times (NYT) published Wednesday.
The NYT’s analysis of voter registration data found that the Democratic Party shed about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, alongside Washington, D.C., which allow voters to register with a political party. Meanwhile, Republicans added 2.4 million registered voters during the same time period, according to the NYT.
In both 2024 and 2025, more new voters registered with the GOP than with the Democrats, per the report. Moreover, the NYT report found that the Democratic Party saw some of its biggest declines in voter registration among men and younger Americans.
Almost 49% of men newly registering with a major political party selected the Democratic Party in 2020, according to the NYT. In 2024, that amount fell by ten percentage points — to roughly 39%, according to the outlet.
“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told the NYT. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”
There are currently about 160,000 fewer registered Democratic voters and 200,000 more registered Republican voters in the U.S. than there were on Election Day 2024, according to the NYT’s analysis of data from the nonpartisan firm L2. Yet, the Democratic Party still has a higher number of voters registered across the nation than the GOP does, the NYT reported.
The news comes amid recent reports that Democrats are struggling to figure out how to win back key voting blocs they lost in the 2024 election cycle, including young men. Additionally, a Wall Street Journal poll released July 25 found that 63% of voters said they view the Democratic Party unfavorably, the highest share since 1990.
“It would be naïve to call 2024 anything other than a reckoning on the Democratic brand,” Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win, told the NYT. “To solve a brand problem, you need people talking about that brand — and that requires partisan dollars.”
Moreover, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has notably been trailing behind Republicans in fundraising this year. The DNC reported having only $15 million on hand by the end of June, which marked the lowest amount in five years, Politico reported on Monday.
DNC chairman Ken Martin admitted in a February 18 memo that voters now perceive his party as the “party of the elites.”
“When I talk about the state of the Democratic Party, I often speak about the impact of perceptions – what voters see, feel, and sense,” Martin wrote. “I believe the canary in the coal mine for what happened on November 5 was the recent showing that, for the first time in modern history, Americans now see the Republicans as the party of the working class and Democrats as the party of the elites.”
Martin has drawn criticism from members of his own party for being too “weak” and “whiny.” Similarly, some Democrats have claimed the party needs to be more “bold” and less “woke.”
President Donald Trump notably won all of the swing states in the 2024 election, along with the GOP winning control of both chambers of Congress. Still, some Democrats have continued to express optimism about their prospects in the 2026 midterm elections.
“It’s going to get worse,” Pruser told the NYT in reference to the prospects of the Democratic Party, “before it gets better.”
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