Six states — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania — give us a glimpse inside something big that is happening under the radar across the country. President Obama won these states, except North Carolina, in 2012. In fact, in 2012, he ran up a cumulative 618,185 vote margin in these states. But that was four years ago. Well, here is the evidence of how quickly times are changing in America.
Today, four years after Obama won these states by over 618,000 votes, the number of registered Democrats in these states has plummeted by more than 775,000. Using the same turnout models but using current registration levels President Obama would have lost re-election. Okay, you say, but hasn’t Republican registration plummeted as well? No, it has not. In fact during the same four years in these six key states, GOP registration has grown by more than 230,000. That represents a swing of one million in just six states where Obama won by only 618,185 votes.
I know, we keep reading about the vaunted ground game that the Democrats have been mounting. Borrowing their argument that their economic policies have not failed because things would have been so much worse without them, perhaps the Democratic ground game has only served to slow down a tsunami of political party realignment. In Florida today there are 212,000 fewer Democrats than there were four years ago. Republican rolls have grown in Florida by 31,000 over the same four years. Democratic registration in Ohio is down by 148,000. North Carolina has 199,000 fewer Democrats. Pennsylvania has also lost more than 193,000 registered Democrats. Ohio has managed to register over 173,000 new Republican voters in four years. Obama won Ohio in 2012 by only 166,277 votes.
Pollsters who tend to use past turnout as a basis for predicting future turnout are not looking at reality. Further, this cultural shift is not easily visible. But these startling numbers might only be the half of it. There is no reason to believe these shifts are not taking place in key states where partisanship is not recorded. To assume this same trend is not occurring in Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin would be foolish.The battleground states are getting redder. The math is not debatable. The highly-touted Democratic ground game doesn’t seem to be stemming that tide.
Barry Bennett is a Republican Strategist based in Washington. He formerly managed Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign and previously served as a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
