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   party’s registration woes. He has now come around.   
      
   “I was wrong,” he said in an interview.   
      
   “Clearly, in retrospect, we can say the Democratic Party had dug itself in   
   too deep a hole in the preceding four years for the Harris campaign to dig   
   itself out in the last few months,” added Mr. Bonier, referring to the 2024   
   bid by former Vice President Kamala Harris. He now calls the registration   
   figures “a big flashing red alert.”   
      
   Grim milestones of Democratic decline have been piling up.   
      
   Last summer, Bucks County, a competitive Philadelphia suburb, tilted   
   Republican in registration for the first time since 2007, according to state   
   records. In the fall, Mr. Trump became the first Republican presidential   
   candidate to carry the county this century.   
      
   This spring, it was Miami-Dade County in Florida, where the number of active   
   Republican voters in the county zoomed past Democrats just months after Mr.   
   Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the county   
   in decades. As recently as November 2020, Democrats outnumbered Republicans   
   there by 200,000.   
      
   Statewide, a 1.2 million-voter swing flipped Florida into the Republican   
   column by registration, according to the Times analysis of L2’s data.   
      
   North Carolina could be the next battleground state to tip. State records   
   show the Democratic edge there is down to less than 17,000 voters — from   
   nearly 400,000 four years ago.   
      
   And Pennsylvania may be on deck.   
      
   Democrats held a registration advantage of 517,310 among active voters there   
   in November 2020, according to state records, but that edge dwindled to   
   53,303 voters this summer.   
      
   Much of that change is from party switchers. From 2020 through July 2025,   
   nearly twice as many Pennsylvania Democrats switched to become Republicans   
   (314,000) as the other way around (161,000), state records show.   
      
   “Anyone who says that these things are not concerning for Democrats is, in my   
   opinion, mostly lying,” said Lakshya Jain, a Democratic analyst and co-   
   founder of Split Ticket, a nonpartisan election-analysis site. “The act of   
   being a registered Democrat is still psychologically something. The act of   
   switching is a political statement.”   
      
   Signs of struggle among men, younger voters and Latinos   
      
   The Democratic Party’s diminished appeal to men and younger voters was   
   evident in partisan registration data long before it became apparent to   
   everyone in the 2024 election.   
      
   Not so long ago, in 2018, Democrats had accounted for 66 percent of new   
   voters under 45 who registered with one of the two major parties. Yet by   
   2024, the Democratic share had plunged to 48 percent, the Times analysis of   
   L2’s data found.   
      
   In other words, Republicans went from roughly one-third of newly registered   
   voters under 45 to a majority in the last six years.   
      
   The story is even bleaker for Democrats in some key states. In Nevada, which   
   releases particularly detailed data, Republicans added nearly twice as many   
   voters under 35 to the rolls as Democrats did last year, state records show.   
      
   The shifts among male voters tell a similar story.   
      
   Nearly 49 percent of men newly registering with a major party chose the   
   Democrats in 2020. In 2024, that figure was down to roughly 39 percent.   
      
   At the same time, the Democratic edge among women registering to vote has   
   shrunk. The combination inverted a gender gap that in recent years had   
   heavily benefited Democrats.   
      
   Few states offer partisan registration data by race. But those that do   
   reflect the Democratic Party’s fading allure to Latino voters, according to   
   the Times analysis of the L2 data.   
      
   In Florida, a slim 52 percent majority of new Latino registrants who chose   
   one of the two major parties had aligned with the Democrats in 2020. By last   
   year, the party’s share of new Latino voters had collapsed to 33 percent.   
      
   Democrats fared only slightly better in North Carolina: The party’s share of   
   Latino registrants picking one of the two major parties declined from 72   
   percent in 2020 to 58 percent last year.   
      
   Fierce debate over reversing ‘distressing trend’   
      
   Within the small community of Democratic data and voter-registration experts,   
   a confidential memo circulated early last year was explosive.   
      
   Aaron Strauss, a data scientist who has spent years studying how to elect   
   Democrats, wrote that the old way of registering voters — working through   
   nonprofit groups to enroll young people and people of color in general rather   
   than explicitly seeking new Democrats — might actually backfire in 2024.   
      
   “If we were to blindly register nonvoters and get them on the rolls, we would   
   be distinctly aiding Trump’s quest for a personal dictatorship,” Mr. Strauss   
   wrote in the memo, which The Washington Post reported at the time.   
      
   Mr. Strauss argued that the left needed to target its new voters more   
   surgically, because Mr. Trump’s support was growing among traditional   
   Democratic constituencies. Registering voters without regard to their   
   political beliefs remained cost-effective for Democrats only with Black   
   voters. With other demographic groups, explicitly partisan groups ought to   
   make explicitly partisan arguments in order to actually benefit Democratic   
   campaigns.   
      
   “It would be naïve to call 2024 anything other than a reckoning on the   
   Democratic brand,” said Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win, a   
   progressive donor network, who argued that more spending on nonpartisan   
   registration was misguided. “To solve a brand problem, you need people   
   talking about that brand — and that requires partisan dollars.”   
      
   But that would be a huge shift, including for politically minded donors, who   
   reap tax breaks from their gifts to some groups that register voters on a   
   nonpartisan basis and that are considered charities. The donors would not get   
   such tax breaks if they gave to traditional PACs.   
      
   Registering voters is a big business — and an expensive endeavor. Every new   
   sign-up costs $30 to $80, one official involved in registering voters said.   
   The memo from Mr. Strauss, who declined to comment, estimated that netting   
   extra Democratic votes by registering Black voters cost $575 per vote in   
   2020.   
      
   Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president and chief executive of Mi Familia Vota, a   
   nonpartisan group that registers Latino voters, said it would be a “major   
   mistake” if progressive donors cut off organizations like his.   
      
   He said that it was the job of Democratic leaders to sell Latinos on the   
   Democratic Party — and that it would be shortsighted to invest expecting only   
   short-term gains.   
      
   J.B. Poersch, who heads the leading super PAC aligned with Senate Democrats   
   and an affiliated nonprofit, called the shrinking Democratic registration   
   margins a “distressing trend.”   
      
   In recent years, he said, it has been “lonely out there” for his   
   organization’s nonprofit arm, which is an advocacy group rather than a   
   charity, when trying to lift registrations, especially in conservative states   
   that Democrats must win to have any chance at a majority.   
      
   Mr. Poersch called the debate between spending money to persuade or register   
   new voters a “false choice.”   
      
   “If we’re going to win, if we’re going to be competitive, we need to be   
   investing in both,” he said.   
      
   Any hope that the drift away from the Democratic Party would end organically   
   with Mr. Trump’s election has been dashed by the limited data so far in 2025.   
   There are now roughly 160,000 fewer registered Democrats than on Election Day   
   2024, according to L2’s data, and 200,000 more Republicans.   
      
      
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