After having suffered massive voter registration losses in the wake of the last presidential election, Democrats have stemmed the bleeding in several key states heading into this year’s midterms, according to an NBC News Decision Desk analysis.NBC News’ Decision Desk analyzed voter file data from TargetSmart, a progressive data firm, for seven of the states that were the closest in the 2024 election and that registered voters by party: Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.From late 2024 through late 2025, Republicans significantly improved their voter registration margin over Democrats in all seven states, including by a net of roughly 100,000 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.But from late 2025 through the middle of this year, Democrats managed to reverse, though not completely erase, those losses in five of them, adding more registrants on net than Republicans in Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
And in New Hampshire and North Carolina, Democrats have slowed the decline.While party registration is not 100% predictive of vote choice, the recent movement toward Democrats on this front provides another reason for optimism for the party this fall.Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are all holding critical races for the Senate or governor (if not both), while New Jersey, which has become more competitive in recent years, is hosting a battleground House contest.The trend comes not only amid a backlash to President Donald Trump that has grown over the course of the year, but also as Democrats campaigned in consequential primaries that often centered on what direction the party would take after its 2024 defeat.Meanwhile, the pool of unaffiliated voters continued to expand in many of those states, reflecting a growing distrust of both major parties.There are three primary ways the party registration margin can change: new voters signing up; registrants switching part...