VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Data from the Virginia Department of Elections shows a slight increase in new voter registration applications in the immediate two days following the end of President Joe Biden's re-election campaign.
Across multiple platforms, including online and on-paper methods, the state recorded more than 4,900 new voter registration applications on July 22 and July 23. Exactly one week prior, the state recorded roughly 3,500 over the two-day window of time.
Elections officials say that an important reminder is that the applications in the dataset are not yet approved by the respective localities.
Chesapeake's General Registrar similarly shared that the city netted 161 voter registrations this week, compared to 67 last week.
This comes days after the organization vote.org announced roughly 40,000 new voter registrations following Vice President Kamala Harris taking over as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Political science professor and analyst Leslie Caughell of Virginia Wesleyan University draws a connection between the two points to gaining momentum from the Harris campaign.
Historically, how often do election cycles see swings in new voter registrations? We saw a glimpse of it with the campaigning by Stacey Abrams in Georgia in 2020.
Leslie Caughell, Virginia Wesleyan University: "So there's no clean answer to that question. And I say that because a lot of this is really dependent on what the candidates in interest groups, organized interest groups do around the election. And you mentioned Stacey Abrams; I think that's an excellent example of this. When you have a candidate who makes voter registration an important piece of an electoral campaign, you'll often see the results of that being increased numbers and again, increased numbers in concentrated time frames, time periods. But it's not unusual to see voter numbers, like the number of registrations start to tick up in August and September. And those sorts of times because you've got students coming back to campus registering to vote, you get voter organizations who do drives like that pretty consistently and people start to get interested in the election, and when they get interested in the election, sometimes they'll register as first time voters or sometimes they realize they've moved and need to register in a new district or something."
Is it reasonable to form a connection that the exiting of President Biden and the entering of Vice President Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket is the basis for this activity?
"So I'm gonna say the political science mantra here, which is correlation isn't causation. And I think you're absolutely right, that we see this uptick in numbers. And I think for a lot of people, you know, the simplest explanation, is sometimes the accurate explanation, which is this reflects enthusiasm about the Harris campaign. I would say the thing that makes me think that's a more likely explanation than maybe the idea that Republicans are just gearing up to vote against her is the fact that she is just fundraising as massively as she's been fundraising for the past week. There does seem to be enthusiasm in the Democratic base and kind of the grassroots of the party for Harris. And I think it's certainly possible that one of the things that you might be seeing in terms of that is a spillover into increased voter registration as people, you know, lobby friends who might not be registered to vote or family members who might not be registered to vote."
How much is this influenced by the fact that the Democratic party brands itself as the party attempting to open up voter access?
"That there is a fascinating question. And if you had asked me that question in 2012, 2016, 2020 I would say, yeah, that I think that makes sense as a reason that you might assume these are Democratic and not Republican voters because Republicans have not focused as much on bringing new voters to the polls. The Trump campaign this year though, has been very clear that their strategy isn't to bring just traditional Republican voters to the polls in part because they've lost, a kind of core part of that constituency in a lot of areas which are white suburban women who tended to vote for Republicans. They're not making a play to get those voters back. They've been very clear that what they are trying to do is appeal to young men 18 to 35 and particularly young minority men in the hopes that what they can do is pull these voters who aren't voting into the process and get them to cast ballots for Trump. And that makes me a little hesitant to say when you look at new voter registrations, we can assume that they are Democratic registrations because Democrats have been so much more focused on expanding the electorate. That is a super long answer."
Would we see this kind of registration activity in the event Harris wasn’t automatically the presumptive party nominee? If this had been an open convention between multiple candidates would there be as strong a push?
"No, I think if we were looking at a brokered convention, people trying to convince delegates on the floor, what you would have among particularly the Democratic Party base and voters is not necessarily anxiety, but I think you'd have more uncertainty and you wouldn't see people rallying behind one particular candidate in the way they have given that Harris is the only candidate on the ticket. It's very clear, I think that the Democratic Party base is okay with the Vice President on the top of their ticket. It’s very clear if you look at her fundraising numbers and you know, if you consider the voter registration numbers there's some momentum behind her campaign now. And you know, a result of that again, is greater engagement on a bunch of different metrics including voter registration. I don't think you would see this if she was fighting for the nomination with a few other people. I think what you would see is people kind of watching and waiting to see what had happened maybe with a little bit of trepidation."