Looking at 3 swing states (FL, NV, NC), we can see that Americans are registering more as Unaffiliated than either major party. This is especially true for young americans who overwhelmingly register as Unaffiliated.
This shows what most of us know, there is a growing disillusionment with both major parties. It's not that people are moving from the Democrats to the Republicans, it's that people are disavowing both parties and registering as Unaffiliated.
I hope you all can see, like myself, that the most recent NYT voter registration article missed a major portion of the voter registration analysis and is about as close to journalistic or data analytic malpractice as one could get. It almost seems intentional.
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Big thanks to the team for pumping and organizing the data!
tool used: Tableau
data source: Florida voter list from Florida Secretary of State: https://dos.fl.gov/
Register to vote: https://vote.gov
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Posted by sillychillly
20 Comments
Looking at 3 swing states (FL, NV, NC), we can see that Americans are registering more as Unaffiliated than either major party. This is especially true for young americans who overwhelmingly register as Unaffiliated.
This shows what most of us know, there is a growing disillusionment with both major parties. It’s not that people are moving from the Democrats to the Republicans, it’s that people are disavowing both parties and registering as Unaffiliated.
I hope you all can see, like myself, that the most recent NYT voter registration article missed a major portion of the voter registration analysis and is about as close to journalistic or data analytic malpractice as one could get. It almost seems intentional.
tool used: Tableau
data sources:
* Florida voter list from Florida Secretary of State: [https://dos.fl.gov/](https://dos.fl.gov/)
* North Carolina voter list from North Carolina Secretary of State: [https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/voter-registration-data](https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/voter-registration-data)
* Nevada voter list from Nevada Secretary of State: [https://www.nvsos.gov/sos](https://www.nvsos.gov/sos)
This anecdotal, but I know plenty of unaffiliated voters. I know very few who are actually unaffiliated in practice. They are almost all Deomcrats or Republicans by another name.
One note about NC, is a lot of people will register as unaffiliated due to NC’s primary process that is semi-closed. This means that a voter can pick which primary they want to vote in. They can vote Democrat every year or Democrat in 2022 then Republican in 2024.
They’re just embarrassed to admit they vote one way or another
Ya both parties are dog shit how is this surprising
This isn’t surprising in the least, given that my only political affiliation at this point is Donald Trump’s a piece of garbage
NC has open primaries, no incentive to register. I get to vote in any primary I want (only one per election)
Florida registered independent here: They want to divide us (through race, wealth, political affiliation, gender, etc) and while we’re too busy being distracted by their narrative they will continue pulling the strings. Don’t be a lemming, think for yourself.
Now they just have to start voting that way.
There is a lot of room for improvement with the presentation style.
The conclusion’s frame of reference is current state, but the data is presented as a trend. The general trend does not clearly indicate that %Unaffiliated is increasing, which compromises the impact of the conclusion.
The two data points that stand out to me are 18-24 shifting away from Democrat from 2020 to 2024 and 25-34 shifting toward Republican from 2020 to 2024. You could use relative registration rates to tease out whether those trends occurred due to rising Unaffiliated or a shift from Democrat to Republican. It’s not easy to infer from the disproportionate peaks with sharp drop-offs.
And a longer time horizon with election cycle as the time granularity to understand the actual trend.
The group that doesn’t vote is unaffiliated. Whatever.
Honest question – would party registration affect gerrymandering, or do they use other data like race, age, etc?
Am young, am Floridian, am unaffiliated, I don’t like either party, frankly I don’t like the two party system either. I do vote what is best in my interests which happens to be more aligned with one party by far than the other.
What does disappoint me though is how many of my classmates back when I was in school said they weren’t going to vote.
This is goodness. No party should feel like they have somebody’s vote locked up. Candidates should have to win votes every time. Anyone who blindly votes along party lines is just as evil as the parties themselves.
I think registering as anything but independent is dumb. Parties and candidates should earn your vote every single election.
Both parties suck – equally.
I assume it’s mostly Democrats that don’t want their Republican parents to see they chose Democrat.
It’s going to be illegal to vote democratic soon. Oh, you need to have your birth certificate in order to vote… but I see you’re a republican so we’ll let it slide *this once* (wink wink). Oh this next one is a democrat? Go back home and get your birth certificate. I’ve got my eye on you.
18-24 age group is due in large part to Nevada instituting automatic voter registration at the DMV in 2020.
In most places this just gives you less power (no vote in primaries) with no upside. Parties aren’t like people, they’re vehicles for the dialectic between opposing sectors of society. Think of them as two cars that have each had their own long history of drivers: the cars themselves are not good or bad, but the driver history can be- and can improve/worsen with a new driver, eventually becoming something completely different.
Tldr: party affiliation isn’t meant to be a personal statement of values; they’re vehicles for strategy and winning the ‘game’ of democracy, regardless of how close your opinion is to the majority/median.