How is this possible?? 1 million voters have switched to republican - AP

[Roland99]

More than 1 million voters switch to GOP in warning for Dems
Suburban swing voters among those changing parties
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/politics/2022/06/27/more-than-1-million-voters-switch-to-gop-in-warning-for-dems/

WASHINGTON – A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans.
More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year, according to voter registration data analyzed by The Associated Press. The previously unreported number reflects a phenomenon that is playing out in virtually every region of the country — Democratic and Republican states along with cities and small towns — in the period since President Joe Biden replaced former President Donald Trump.

But nowhere is the shift more pronounced — and dangerous for Democrats — than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump's Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back. Over the last year, far more people are switching to the GOP across suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Republicans also gained ground in counties around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa.

Ben Smith, who lives in suburban Larimer County, Colorado, north of Denver, said he reluctantly registered as a Republican earlier in the year after becoming increasingly concerned about the Democrats' support in some localities for mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, the party's inability to quell violent crime and its frequent focus on racial justice.

“It’s more so a rejection of the left than embracing the right,” said Smith, a 37-year-old professional counselor whose transition away from the Democratic Party began five or six years ago when he registered as a libertarian.

Ok. Now I get it.

Suburban racists and libertarian nut jobs mostly I bet.

[emulatorloo]

1. 'Ben Smith' probably bitches constantly that Biden hasn't done enough to fight covid.

[keep_left]

30. While whining about mandatory Covid vaccinations, one of the only things...

...that will stop the plague.

[2naSalit]

2. At this point in time...

A lot of Democrats are changing to R for the primaries and changing back in time for the general.

Some are intending to be registered as R but vote D ticket as protest. It's not just one thing and that one interview may be cherry picked.

[tanyev]

5. Yeah, that was my first thought.

How many of these states have closed primaries? I often vote in Republican primaries, but Texas has open primaries and doesn't specify any party affiliation on voter registration cards.

[Haggard Celine]

13. That's immediately what I thought, too.

We don't register by party here, but a lot of Democrats here vote in the Republican primaries. I do it a lot. In states where you register by party, it would make sense for people to switch parties for the primary.

[Lucinda]

24. ❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[PortTack]

26. That, and FL going round shifting ppls voter registration without their consent

[lindysalsagal]

28. Agreed. Possibly, it's an anti-tfg candidate strategy.

Or, it could be dems who want to see the ugliest winger on the ballot.

[mucifer]

3. It's the economy. The dems will be blamed for all the blocking of financial help the repubs have

done. It's REALLY bad. The oil companies have fucked us over really bad.

The reproductive rights issue could turn things around tho.

[KentuckyWoman]

4. They voted R in the primary

People often flip to try to get an easy to beat R out of it. Then in the general vote D.

I personally knew some Democrats in Kentucky who went R in the 2016 primary to vote Trump. They thought he would be easy to beat.

[Calista241]

10. Bill Clinton said it best: "it's the economy, stupid"

Reproductive rights can energize people who were going to vote for us anyway.

The problem with it, IMO, is that we're really angry about it, and our supporters expect our politicians to be really angry about it. That anger has the potential to drown out our message on the economy. The shouting is what will get them on TV, and will get the most cheers, but most people will be looking for us to solve the economic problems.

At the end of the day, abortion isn't illegal, and I think we have to figure out how to get that into our messaging. Soccer Mom's and the suburbanites we 1000% need to vote for us will still have abortion available to them. They may have to jump through an extra hoop, but they'll still have it should they need it.

[standingtall]

12. Actually abortion is illegal in several States already

with more to come and if Democrats don't win in November many more to come after that.

[Calista241]

19. Those are state laws, not country-wide. And in most of those states, abortion

was largely unavailable already. There was a single (1) abortion clinic in Mississippi last week. How many patients could that 1 clinic possibly serve? They were probably able to fulfill only a small fraction of the services needed.

Today, it's not uncommon for people travel to get treatment for all kinds of medical issues. Rehab, chemo, fertility, all kinds of surgeries, dental implants. It's not as rare as some of us think, and it's certainly more common than it was in the 70's when Roe came out. Yes, I understand some poor people cannot travel as readily as others, but we're talking about winning an election here in 4 months, not solving systemic economic problems that cannot be resolved in that short amount of time.

In addition, birth control and the day after pill (which is FDA certified, and will be difficult for states to ban for that reason) are much more prominent and easy to get today. Doctors and pharmacies would often make moral judgements and decline to issue the medication back in the 60's and 70's, and that just doesn't happen with these medications today.

[standingtall]

22. All remaining States that people can travel too

for an abortion are one republican Governor and or one republican State legislature away from coming to an end. What's the closes State people in Mississippi can travel to for an abortion now? Illinois? Which is only a light blue State it's far from safe. Not to mention the extra stress it's going to put on such States with the increased migration of those seeking an abortion.

[PortTack]

27. IL is NOT light blue! We are just like every lrg blue state that has pockets of red- NY, CA, NJ

[TwilightZone]

29. That was James Carville.

But it certainly applies. Polls taken after the decision show that the economy is still issue #1.

[Diamond_Dog]

6. So,

They’re against vaccines during a pandemic, justice for the long-time marginalized and poor, and probably don’t support gun control, an issue touted for years by the Dems, which would be a big step in fighting violent crime.

Yep, I get it.

[llmart]

7. And so the media begins to stoke up the horse race before November.

Dems need to fight like hell to combat this, especially getting the young voters to register in masses and making it easy for them to vote (i.e. college kids living in a state other than their own at the time of election).

[sarcasmo]

17. 18-30 shows up the million who switch do Not matter.

[fightforfreedom]

8. Lets see how that holds up after taking women rights away.

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Democrats in some states register (R) for primaries, then switch back

[CatWoman]

15. i know a lot of them here in Georgia did that

in order to defeat any Trump endorsed candidates: https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/06/07/some-in-ga-gop-want-closed-primaries-after-trump-picks-lose

[obamanut2012]

21. I am registered R in FL

So I can vote in the R primaries. I am far, far from being an R.

[standingtall]

11. This article tells us nothing

The guy in this article was an anti-vaxxer libertarian. Nor does this article disclose how many of these party switcher were independents. Probably right leaning independents nor how many of them were right leaning Democrats in the pre-Trump era that only switched Democratic, because of Trump. I suspect there is a big number of those.

[sarcasmo]

18. Was Bill Maher the guy in the article?

[treestar]

14. more warnings

so we are supposed to go anti-vaxx in the platform?

A million people is not so many compared to all the voters. And what states are they in? That's all that matters.

The media trying to make a horse race again. They always do it this way.

[Deminpenn]

16. The registration shift has been going on for awhile now

in Pennsylvania. Conservative Dems have been aligning their registration with their voting habits and visa versa with Rs.

The last couple of years, some Rs have registered as I/D because of Trump, but they aren't Dems in any meaningful sense.

Read this article earlier. The headline implies that Rs netted 1M new voters when the facts showed the actual net gain was 370k due to 630k who switched to D. The two voters quoted were a libertarian and a conservative Dem who hadn't voted for a Dem since 2016.

[AkFemDem]

20. And what was the shift in 2019-2020?

I personally know someone who was so disgusted with Trump she switched parties sometime in 2019/2020. She recently announced she was switching back, for the midterms. She says she will stay Republican unless Trump runs again. I wonder how many of these “switchers” are similar.

[onenote]

23. Slightly misleading and overstates the impact -- only 370,000 net switches to R.

1 million have switched to Republican (and that includes not just those switching from D to R, but also those switching from Libertarian to R). 630,000 have switched to the Democratic party.

So the net switch is 370,000, not one million. That's not a good thing, but it's not as dramatic as the article makes it seem (and if you weigh the possibility that a lot of those switching to the Republican party already were voting with the Republicans, the impact may be even less).

[Omen78]

25. I don't think we should take this lightly...

Something in changing....We're seeing a shift in minority (Hispanic & African American) support to republicans as well. I'll probably catch flack for this, but I personally believe its the populist messaging. Biden was/is my guy, but I'm starting to think that what America needed was a democrat populist movement to counter Trump.