Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have both framed the 2024 election as a race to maximize voter turnout. For much of the campaign, that effort to energize voters has favored Republicans, but new research from polling and data firm TargetSmart shows that Harris and newly energized Democrats have finally flipped the script on the MAGA movement.
In a thread posted on X (formerly Twitter), TargetSmart Senior Advisor Tom Bonier shared the group’s stunning findings: In the more than a dozen states that have updated their voter files since late last month, Democrats have made record gains among every major voter group, blowing Republicans out of the water in the process.
Black women ages 18 to 29 led the way, with a 175.8% increase in voter registrations compared with the same time period in 2020. Hispanic voters have also rushed to register since Harris became the Democratic nominee, with young Hispanic women posting a stunning 149.7% increase in registrations, and Hispanic voter registrations overall jumping over 60%.
Women weren’t the only ones flocking to register. Registrations among Black voters leapt 85.8% over their 2020 numbers, while Asian Americans saw a 31.7% gain. Democrats as a whole saw a 51.2% increase in total registrations, compared with just 7% for Republicans. Those are game-changing numbers not just for Harris but also for Democrats up and down the ballot, and according to Bonier, those voters are also displaying higher enthusiasm than they did when Biden beat Trump four years ago.
“You just don’t see that sort of thing happen in elections normally,” Bonider told CBS News on Wednesday, adding that the data indicated voters are “fired up and want to participate in this election.”
The numbers back up Bonier’s confidence. A Gallup survey released this week found that 78% of Democratic-leaning voters say they are more enthusiastic than usual to vote. That nearly matches the record-high numbers recorded in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama rode a wave of voter energy into the White House. By comparison, just 6 in 10 Republicans say they are more enthusiastic than usual—a lower number than around this point in 2020.
Those numbers represent more than just a “fired up” voter base. The most recent benchmark for surging Democratic turnout came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, when record numbers of first-time voters cast ballots. According to Bonier, what he calls the “Harris Effect” has now surpassed even those monumental 2022 numbers—and they aren’t slowing down.
That’s a huge shift from where the Democratic Party was just six weeks ago. It’s no secret that President Joe Biden was struggling to engage Democrats’ core constituencies. Democratic insiders openly fretted about a round of June polling that showed Biden losing large numbers of young voters, Black Americans, and Hispanic voters to Trump—and with it, key swing states like Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
The evidence is mounting that Harris’ dynamic campaign has not only reenergized those skeptical groups but also spiked interest and enthusiasm in the race in ways Republicans are struggling to counter-message. Once written off as Trump pickups, Sun Belt states such as Arizona and Nevada are now back in play. But there’s more: A new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll published Thursday finds Harris leading or tied with Trump in all seven critical swing states.
“When you’re seeing some of the swings in these polls we’ve seen over the last few weeks, a lot of that is actually … turnout voters who are persuadable,” Bonier told CNN’s Manu Raju.
“The great position the Harris position finds itself in is that they don’t have to pick one path” to beating Trump in the Electoral College, Bonier added. Meanwhile, Trump’s road to the White House has narrowed considerably as Republicans find themselves spending money in once safe states, including North Carolina and Georgia.
Now comes the challenging part: turning out those newly registered voters. In 2008, the Obama campaign focused millions of dollars on contacting new voters and building the infrastructure to ensure those voters made it to the polls on Election Day. Harris is now flush with over $540 million in fundraising in just over a month of campaigning. She certainly has the financial resources to build a larger voter mobilization operation than Obama, but she has only two months in which to actually get that nationwide network running.
There’s little doubt that Biden’s decision to step down and endorse Harris was the catalyst for Democrats’ massive gains in recent voter registration. By listening to what voters wanted, Harris and Democrats reengaged millions of disaffected voters while registering many who had never before cast a ballot. After almost a year of certainty in their own victory, Republicans have failed to generate anything close to that level of engagement or voter mobilization.
Harris will have her biggest opportunity yet to sell those voters on her vision for America when she and Trump debate on Sept. 10. She’ll be speaking to a national audience of voters who are engaged and optimistic. Bringing those voters out to the polls in November could mean the difference between a vibrant democracy and a dark future of MAGA authoritarianism.
