NC Democrats can’t ignore their plummeting voter registration numbers | Opinion

President Lyndon B. Johnson said that “the first rule of politics is to learn to count,” and North Carolina Republicans have in recent years eagerly studied one particular tally — the voter registration gap between the state’s two major parties.

Last weekend, voter registration rolls showed Republicans eclipsed Democrats for the first time in state history. The difference is minuscule — the Republican share of voters now exceeds the Democratic share by 30.24% to 30.21% — but for Republicans, the moment is monumental.

“Across North Carolina, our volunteers and county leaders have done incredible work over the past several years to outvote and out-register Democrats,” state GOP Chair Jason Simmons said in a statement. “Republican policies have made our state the best place to live, work, and retire, and we are committed to showing North Carolina is a Red State in 2026.”

The registration gap between the two parties is only about 2,000 voters. As of Tuesday, it was 2,312,990 to 2,315,067. Elections will be decided by who wins the state’s largest group, the 2.97 million unaffiliated voters. Mirroring a national trend, North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters overtook Democrats to become the state’s largest voter group in 2022.

Anderson Clayton, the state Democratic Party chair, said in a statement that she is confident her party can succeed despite the Republicans’ registration edge.

“I wish the NCGOP all the luck in the world convincing North Carolinians to go to the polls next November to support the Republican agenda that has spiked costs for working families and ripped away health care from hundreds of thousands of people,” she said.

Wiley Nickel, a former Democratic congressman who is currently a candidate for Wake County district attorney, noted that he was elected to the U.S. House in 2022 by winning unaffiliated voters and that Democrats won six statewide races in 2024.

“In 2022, I flipped a Republican-leaning congressional district from red to blue thanks to unaffiliated voters who were tired of MAGA extremism.,” he said. “The GOP registration edge is basically a nothing-burger.”

But others besides Republicans think the Democrats’ slide may be a something-burger.

Christopher Cooper, a Western Carolina University political science professor and author of “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer,” analyzed the Democrats’ voter registration decline in a recent article in The Assembly.

“Since 1988, Democrats’ share of party registration has dropped a whopping 34 percentage points — down from 65 percent in 1988 to 31 percent today,” he wrote. “These are, indeed, hair-on-fire numbers for the party.”

David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor and director of the Meredith Poll, agreed. “I think Chris Cooper is right,” he said. “The Democratic Party’s brand is weak, so that is the cause of registered Republicans exceeding registered Democrats.”

Part of the shift reflects both parties offering open primaries. Unaffiliated voters can vote in a primary, though they must choose only one party’s ballot. Affiliated voters can vote only in their party’s primary.

What’s also happening isn’t so much voters turning to the Republican Party — the GOP share has remained mostly flat — as it is younger voters choosing to register as unaffiliated. Nationally, the share of voters under 45 who chose to register with one of the two major parties fell from 66 percent choosing the Democratic Party in 2018 to 45 percent in 2024, The New York Times reported.

Democrats expect to do well in the November midterms, but mostly they’re counting on gaining through the unpopularity of Republican President Donald Trump and compliant Republicans who control Congress and have allowed the president to usurp its powers. But to grow their party, Democrats will have to do more than not be Republicans.

Wesley Knott, leader of the Wake County Democratic Party, said that while the Democrats’ share of registered voters has declined, “the analysis that we’ve done shows there is not a sharp uptick in people who are conservative.”

What’s missing, Knott said, is a failure to connect with people who should be Democrats.

“The trend we see is fewer left-leaning voters are wanting to affiliate with the Democratic Party,” he said. “That’s a brand problem.”

On the state level, Clayton has emphasized outreach by Democrats. The party is fielding candidates this year even in heavily Republican rural districts to emphasize that Democrats offer a choice to all voters.

Knott said people who tend to vote Democratic but don’t register with the party make it harder for the party to prioritize its issues and target voters. He wants those voters to improve his party by joining it. He said, “Help us help you by just telling us you are on our team.”

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com