Walk Away: One Million Voters Flip From D to R Nationally

Some suburban Karens are getting a little freaked out by how freaky-deaky the Democrat Party has become, reports AP:

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.

...

While party switching is not uncommon, the data shows a definite reversal from the period while Trump was in office, when Democrats enjoyed a slight edge in the number of party switchers nationwide.

But over the last year, roughly two-thirds of the 1.7 million voters who changed their party affiliation shifted to the Republican Party. In all, more than 1 million people became Republicans compared to about 630,000 who became Democrats.

...

In Florida, Republicans captured 58 percent of party switchers during those last years of the Trump era. Now, over the last year, they command 70 percent. And in Pennsylvania, the Republicans went from 58 to 63 percent of party changers.

The current advantage for Republicans among party changers is playing out with particular ferocity in the nation's suburbs.

The AP found that the Republican advantage was larger in suburban "fringe" counties, based on classifications from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to smaller towns and counties. Republicans boosted their share of party changers in 168 of 235 suburban counties AP examined -- 72 percent -- over the last year, compared with the last years of the Trump era.

These included suburban counties across Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Virginia and Washington state.

Republicans also gained ground in further-out suburban counties, which the CDC lumps in with medium-size cities and calls "medium metro" -- more than 62 percent of such counties, 164 in all, saw Republican growth. They range from the suburban counties north of Denver, like Larimer, to Los Angeles-area ones like Ventura and Santa Barbara in California.

The Republican advantage was nearly universal, but it was stronger in some places than others.

For example, in Lorain County, Ohio, just outside Cleveland, nearly every party switcher over the last year has gone Republican. That's even as Democrats captured three-quarters of those changing parties in the same county during end of the Trump era.

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Back in Larimer County, Colorado, 39-year-old homemaker Jessica Kroells says she can no longer vote for Democrats, despite being a reliable Democratic voter up until 2016.

There was not a single "aha moment" that convinced her to switch, but by 2020, she said the Democratic Party had "left me behind."

"The party itself is no longer Democrat, it's progressive socialism," she said, specifically condemning Biden's plan to eliminate billions of dollars in student debt.

Biden hit a new low in the CBS poll, though I saw a later report pegging his support at 41%, not 40%:

It's also a record for his RCP net-negative rating (that is, the difference between his positive rating and negative rating).

I'm very confident that Biden will not be the Democrat candidate for president, but that doesn't help the Democrats all that much: Biden is pushing consensus Democrat policy. He's not coloring outside the Democrat lines.

This is what they want. They are a hyperwoke party. They are the party of Drag Queens in Schools. That's not hyperbole; that's something that actual Democrat politicians support. The Michigan Attorney General declared "A drag queen in every school!"

So who would run in place of Biden, with greater popularity? Bernie Sanders would be a more authentically socialist socialist, but is he going to disown the woke identity politics that are now central to the Democrats' core?

They can't go any further left, and it's politically impossible to move to the center.

So all they could offer is "Bidenism, But Better!"

posted by Ace at 03:52 PM

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