New York Times: Another New 'Nightmare Scenario' Is Unfolding For Democrats

Posted • August 27, 2025: The New York Times caused quite a stir among politicos last week with its in-depth nationwide analysis showing a dramatic voter registration shift away from Democrats, and toward Republicans, over the last half-decade or so. In short, Team Blue has shed millions of registered voters since the 2020 election, while the GOP has gained slightly more than a corresponding number. These trends helped Republicans secure majorities in the House and Senate in the 2024 election, in which President Trump swept the battleground states and captured the popular vote. In case you missed it, here are the broad strokes of the Times' findings, based on data across more than two dozen states: “The Democrat Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls. Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.”

“That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from. The stampede away from the Democrat Party is occurring in battleground states, the bluest states and the reddest states, too…Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats. In fact, for the first time since 2018, more new voters nationwide chose to be Republicans than Democrats last year. All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million. There are still more Democrats registered nationwide than Republicans, partly because of big blue states like California allow people to register by party, while red states like Texas do not. But the trajectory is troublesome for Democrats…”
The full piece, in all its glory, is here. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/democratic-party-voter-registration-crisis.html —— CNN followed up with this breakdown, showing GOP registration advantages in four of the most important battlegrounds states on the US electoral map. This is how the Times-covered phenomenon looks on a more curated, localized scale, further illustrating some of the structural problems Democrats now face: CNN: Republicans in the best position with voter registration in over 20 years. GOP Registration gains vs Trump’s 1st term: 🔴 Pennsylvania: 🔴 Republicans +8% 🔴 North Carolina : 🔴 Republicans +8% 🔴 Nevada: 🔴 Republicans +6% 🔴 Arizona: 🔴 Republicans +3% —— But the headaches continue for the opposition party, as registration hemorrhaging isn't their only systemic challenge.

The Times has also dug into an issue I've raised on several occasions -- namely, the 2030 census, and what it's likely to wreak upon Democrats (even if non-citizens or illegal immigrants continue to be counted). The last census represented a scandalous misfire, as admitted by the Census Bureau itself. Their counting errors unjustly and inaccurately disadvantaged Republicans in 2020, 2022, and 2024 (and, unless somehow rectified, in 2026 and 2028, too), which is part of the reason why we're seeing some GOP aggression in the current mid-decade redistricting battle. But at the end of the decade, population movement and distributions are poised to tilt the playing field further away from the Democrat Party: —— New: The ticking timebomb alarming Democrats: the 2030 reapportionment in the Electoral College. Red states gain Electoral College seats, blue states lose. The "blue wall" is gone: https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1960245645333442561/gD_rGa9f?format=png&name=large

“The year is 2032. Studying the Electoral College map, a Democrat presidential candidate can no longer plan to sweep New Hampshire, Minnesota and the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and win the White House. A victory in the swing state of Nevada would not help, either. That is the nightmare scenario many Democrat Party insiders see playing out if current U.S. population projections hold. After every decennial census, like the one coming up in 2030, congressional seats are reallocated among the states based on population shifts. Those seats in turn affect how big a prize each state is within the Electoral College — or how a candidate actually wins the presidency. In the next decade, the Electoral College will tilt significantly away from Democrats. Deeply conservative Texas and Florida could gain a total of five congressional seats, and the red states of Utah and Idaho are each expected to add a seat…”

“Those gains will come at the expense of major Democrat states like New York and California, according to a New York Times analysis of population projections…Across all of the possible scenarios in the nine states that would be considered battlegrounds in the 2032 election, Democrats would see about a third of their current winning Electoral College combinations disappear if population projections hold. However, when looking only at the most feasible winning combinations based on voting behaviors in the 2024 election, the outlook is far worse. Of Democrats’ 25 most plausible paths to victory in 2024, only five would remain.” —— This is a result of people leaving blue-dominated states and flocking to red states: “Rapid growth in Southern and Western red states is driving the changes to the political map, according to The Times’s analysis.”

“Texas and Florida are each expected to gain millions of residents in the coming years, expanding each state’s population by nearly 13 percent, according to Esri. The fastest growing Democrat state, Colorado, will expand its population by less than 10 percent. New York and Illinois are both expected to shrink by 2030, and California’s population will essentially stay the same.” —— These (literal) moves don't occur in a vacuum. They are driven, in large part, by policy, affordability, quality of life, and values. And this potential solution for Democrats is rather daunting, per the Times article: "Should the projections hold, one hope for Democrats is to do what seems, at least after the 2024 election, impossible: pivot to the South. That would mean turning states like Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana — all places Mr. Trump won by more than 20 percentage points — into competitive battlegrounds, and quickly."

A pivot to the South? If true, it doesn't seem like a great time for the Democrat Party to be shifting harder to the left, even as their base demands exactly that. Outside groups who want to help Democrats win more elections are practically begging them to get more mainstream, moderate and normal: Third Way is circulating a memo, shared first with Politico Playbook, featuring a new black list of words Dems shouldn’t use. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gy9EY1HXkAAMGbc?format=jpg&name=medium —— What words would even remain in their lexicon, if you deprived them of their cringey leftist vernacular? Voters want normalcy, yet Democrats are out here nominating Communists in high profile races and doing things like this because their culture is so deeply infused with identity-fixated wokeness and weirdness. They can't help themselves. (…)

• More at: Townhall - NYT: Another New 'Nightmare Scenario' Is Unfolding for Democrats
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2025/08/27/nyt-new-nightmare-scenario-awaits-democrats-n2662317
🚨 X/Twitter - Eric Daugherty: Map Slap: Democrats Facing Double-Digit Electoral College Swing to the GOP Per 2030 Census Models
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1960114615515246808
Twitchy: How LOW Can They Go? Poll Shows Dem Favorability Dips Further (and This Is BEFORE Their Crime Meltdown!)
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/08/13/cillizza-dems-at-record-low-in-gallup-n2417230