Joe Biden may be facing a new-voter problem, which the coronavirus pandemic isn’t helping.
Data from April and May show a dramatic drop in those looking to cast a vote for the first time this November. First-time voters, often on the younger side, were crucial in the 2008 and 2012 wins by President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president.
In Florida, for example, new voter registrations have dropped 60% compared to numbers seen in 2016, according to data gathered by The Civics Center. Democrats are hoping to gin up enthusiasm among those under 25 to help swing the state back to their column after losing it to President Trump in the last election.
The numbers are even starker in Wisconsin, which in April saw a 88% drop in new registration compared to four years before. And if Democrats hope to flip Texas, they’ll need to reverse the nearly 66% drop in voter registration in the state.
The decrease in potential new voters is likely attributed to the coronavirus outbreak, which has caused many offices where the public can register, such as schools and motor vehicle departments, to temporarily close. Even in places that are not swing states, such as New Mexico, Utah, and Illinois, newly registered voters have dropped by over 50%. In Vermont, the month of April saw just 134 new voters compared to 2,942 in 2016.
Across the entire country, there were just 194,596 new voter registrations in May, compared to 1,490,631 in 2016.
Fewer new voters can also be attributed to a lack of enthusiasm for Biden. Polling consistently shows Republicans far more excited to cast their vote for Trump in the fall, with a memo from the president’s campaign arguing that “Biden and his campaign have yet to inspire or coalesce their own base,” which is primarily made up of younger voters.
Although much of that memo was seen nothing more than an excuse for the president’s consistently poor polling performance, evidence that Democrats are failing to attract new voters like in 2008 existed before the coronavirus shut much of the country down. In the Democratic Iowa caucuses, for example, 176,000 turned out to participate in this year’s contest. That was a modest improvement from 2016, which saw 5,000 fewer, but far from the 236,000 who participated in 2008.
Of those who caucused this year, 35% self-identified as first-timers, compared to 57% in 2008. And although more young people participated in the caucuses this year, over 10,000 fewer of them were those under the age of 25.
And even the few voters who are registering for the first time this year are leaning Republican, a remarkable feat signaling that the GOP’s new get-out-the-vote operation is paying dividends. In Iowa, where a new poll shows Trump narrowly leading Biden, Republicans overtook Democrats in active voter registrations.
Democrats, delighted by the polls currently showing Biden on the path to win well over 300 electoral votes in November, remain nervous by the trend but say there is still much time to make up for lost ground.
“While COVID had a substantial impact on voter registration among likely Democratic voters, the registration gap is not only surmountable, with smart, data-driven organizing progressives can make up for lost time, expand the electorate and engage more Americans in the voting franchise,” the liberal-leaning data firm TargetSmart wrote in a memo.
