Democratic voters have declined in 93% of the counties in the nation’s states that allow partisan or Independent registrations since 2016, while Republican voter registrations have gone up in 77% of those jurisdictions, according to a new analysis by USAFacts.

The situation is not simply Democrats losing ground and the GOP gaining ground, however, because the report also highlights a significant increase in the number of Independent and Minor Party registrations, as well as voters declining to identify with any category. Such registrations increased in 75% of the measured counties. There are 1,425 counties in the 30 states that permit some form of partisan registrations, but the USAFacts analysis focused on the 1,360 counties that make up the 27 states with the broadest permissions.

“An increasing percentage of voters are registering with a minor party or no party at all. In states that require party affiliation on voter registration (because not all do), three out of four counties had voters shifting away from the Republican and Democratic parties over the past decade,” USAFacts said.

“In some states, both Republican and unaffiliated voter growth drew away from Democratic registration. In North Carolina, unaffiliated registrations grew in every single county, while the Republican share grew alongside it in 78 of the state’s 100 counties. The Democratic share fell in all 100,” the report continued.

“In other states, both parties lost ground in roughly equal measure. A prime example of this is Colorado, where unaffiliated and minor party registration climbed 16 percentage points over the decade, while both major parties lost ground,” the report said.

Overall, according to the new analysis, “Democratic registration share fell across all county types, dropping the most in rural counties and the least in urban ones. Although Democrats remain the largest group of registered voters nationwide by total count, their share declined in 93% of counties, roughly 1,260 of the 1,360 that track party affiliation over time.” The state with the biggest Democratic loss was West Virginia which saw approximately 250,000, or 17%, of voters leaving the party between 2016 and 2026.

Within the overall trends, there are sharp differences. For example, Colorado was a solid Republican state for most of the 20th century, but that began changing in the late 1990s and early 2000s as migration from other states, especially California, combined over the next two decades with increased immigrants from Latin and South America. In recent years, net out-migration has shifted the Rocky Mountain state to solid Democrat, but with a burgeoning Independent/Minor party registration.

As a result, between 2016 and 2026, for example, Independent/Minor party registrants went from 38% to a clear majority of 54%, even as Democratic registrations dropped from 31% to 24% and Republican registrations from 31% to 22%.

Next door to Colorado, Oklahoma registrations showed a dramatic shift away from that state’s traditional alignment with the Democratic Solid South through the 1970s to become by the early 2000s one of the most solid Republican jurisdictions in the nation. By 2008, both chambers of Oklahoma’s state legislature had solid GOP majorities. In 2016, 46% of Oklahoma voters were registered Republicans, 40% were Democratic, and 15% were Independent/Minor. A decade later, those figures shifted to 53% GOP, 25% Democratic, and 22% Independent/Minor.

In North Carolina, Democratic registrations fell in all 100 of that state’s counties, while GOP registrants increased in 78 of the 100 counties. In 2016, North Carolina registrations were 40% Democratic, and 30% each for the GOP and Independent/Minor Parties. Today, the GOP is still at 30%, but the Democratic total has fallen to the same percentage as the Independent/Minor Parties jumped to 40%.

The authors of the USAFacts analysis caution that “the shifts described here are broad and consistent. But registration data has real limits. It captures what box someone checked on a form, not what they did in the voting booth. A voter who switches from Democratic to unaffiliated may still vote for Democratic candidates. A newly registered Republican may not show up to vote at all.”

The report continued, “The data also can’t distinguish between different kinds of change. A county where Democratic registration share fell by 10 points might have longtime Democrats who switch to unaffiliated but keep voting for the same party, or new voters registering as Republican, or inactive voters being removed from the rolls, or all three. The net shift is real, but the individual stories behind it aren't visible in the data.”

Matt Carpenter, director of FRC Action, told The Washington Stand that the registration trends have contributed to major changes in both parties. “Both the Republican and Democratic coalitions have undergone a rapid shift since the arrival of Donald Trump on the national scene in 2015. The Democratic Party of today looks a lot wealthier, more suburban, and more educated than the coalition that first elected Barack Obama, for example. And the Republican coalition today is filled with small business owners and workers that were not the backbone of the Republican coalition that voted for Romney in 2012.”

Even so, Carpenter noted, “this shift has produced an advantage for Republicans, in that non-college voters comprise some two-thirds of the electorate. While the new Democratic coalition is smaller than it was previously, it tends to be a higher propensity voting coalition. I think this explains how the sinking number of Democratic voter registrations have nevertheless kept up with the MAGA base on election day. It all comes down to who turns out to vote, especially in a low turnout midterm election.”