The Republicans have cut the Democratic Party’s voter registration edge in key states, a development President Trump’s campaign views as a hidden advantage as polls show rival Joe Biden growing his lead.
In Pennsylvania, the Republican Party has sliced the Democrats’ dominance with registered voters by nearly 200,000 since Election Day 2016. The Republicans also made up ground in North Carolina, reducing the Democrats’ superiority among registered voters by 243,000 compared to four years ago. In Florida, the GOP chopped the Democratic advantage by 154,000. In Iowa, the Republicans turned a nearly 15,000 voter registration deficit on March 1 into a 13,000 lead on Thursday.
Biden has increased his lead nationally and improved his standing in critical battleground states, according to polls released after the first presidential debate and in the aftermath of Trump contracting the coronavirus. But the Trump campaign is excited about the results of voter registration efforts amid a disruptive pandemic, saying the legwork puts the president on track for reelection.
“Part of voter registration is simply harnessing enthusiasm,” said Nick Trainer, the Trump campaign’s director of battleground strategy. “There is a knock-down, drag-out part of registering voters, and it’s time-consuming. But you can’t register them if they’re not enthused about your party or your candidate.”
Charlie Gerow, a Republican operative in Pennsylvania, said the vast improvement in GOP registration figures is directly related to enthusiasm for Trump and cannot simply be explained by voters adjusting their registration to match party preference.
“Some of these registrations are, in fact, Democrat crossovers from people who have been voting Republican for a while,” Gerow said. But that doesn’t explain the massive change in Pennsylvania, he said. “Many are new registrants as well as a significant number who are registering Republican specifically because of Donald Trump,” Gerow said.
Democrats are dismissing the Trump campaign’s braggadocio as misplaced confidence.
Democratic National Committee spokesman David Bergstein said the party also is growing its ranks of registered voters in crucial battlegrounds. For instance, the Democrats now hold an 11% voter registration edge in Pima County, Arizona, the second-most populous county in a critical swing state. Another unfolding dynamic Democrats emphasize to counter the significance of Republican registration gains is the strong advantage the party enjoys in mail-in voting and early, in-person voting.
Not only are Democrats outpacing Republicans, the party is outpacing itself compared to four years ago, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on the strength of narrow victories in states such as Florida and Pennsylvania and a landslide-level win in Iowa.
“We are beating them in voter participation,” Bergstein said. And he noted that Democratic voter registration “across the battleground states” still exceeds that of Republicans.
Late Tuesday, Biden’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls had jumped to 9 percentage points. His margin over Trump was 6.5 points in Pennsylvania, 3.5 points in Florida, and 3.4 points in Arizona. The race was essentially tied in Iowa and North Carolina.
Republicans are putting a lot of stock in Trump’s ground game, run jointly with the Republican National Committee. The Trump campaign returned to in-person field operations months before the Biden campaign. The GOP believes this tactical difference led the party’s voter registration gains and will increase Trump’s performance on Election Day compared to any deficiencies suggested by the public opinion polls.
Some Republican insiders caution that the president is going to have to keep the contest with Biden a lot closer than it is now for voter turnout to be the difference-maker the Trump campaign is predicting. In Iowa, where Trump had maintained a small lead but where recent polls now show a margin-of-error race, the Republicans’ small lead in registered voters could put the president over the top.
“It helps marginally,” a GOP operative in Iowa said. “The real question will be whether Trump holds the Obama-Obama-Trump voters.”
