Democrats are feverishly debating whether they should fine-tune voter registration efforts among young people and minorities, saying efforts that traditionally worked for their side risk boosting former President Donald Trump’s numbers in November.
The debate was sparked by a memo from Aaron Strauss, a data scientist who worked on progressive spending at OpenLabs, and polling that shows unregistered breaking toward the Republican side.
“If we were to blindly register nonvoters and get them on the rolls, we would be distinctly aiding Trump’s quest for a personal dictatorship,” Mr. Strauss argued in the memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The memo hits on a simmering fear within the Democratic Party that it is losing its grips on core voting blocs that, historically, have fueled Democratic victories, including President Biden’s win in 2020.
Gallup surveys show the share of Americans who are not registered to vote, yet lean Democratic, dropped from about 51% in 2016 to 42% now, while the share of unregistered persons leaning Republican rose from 31% to 40%.
Nearing a Biden-Trump rematch, a New York Times/Siena College last month showed support for Mr. Trump among Black voters had risen by 19 points over the past four years, from 4% to 23%.
Mr. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, says he is making inroads with Black and Latino voters because of concerns about inflation and other pocketbook issues. On the stump, the former president talks about how the economy benefited minorities under his leadership from 2017 to the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
Meanwhile, Mr. Biden carried the youth vote by 25 percentage points over Mr. Trump in 2020. But a spate of polls released earlier this year warned that those voters might not be there for Mr. Biden in November.
Young voters in the polls cited several areas in which they say Mr. Biden has disappointed them. They accuse him of dragging his feet on climate change, failing to fulfill his promises to cancel student loans or codify Roe v. Wade, and say he mishandled the economy.
Concerns about the Biden administration’s support for Israel amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza have complicated matters for the Democratic incumbent.
The Strauss memo warned that drawing out non-Black minority and young voters cost more than $1,200 per net vote in 2020 versus $575 per vote among Black Americans, meaning “only African American registration is clearly a prime opportunity.”
The memo was circulated to major Democratic donors in January, sparking an internal clash among groups charged with signing up new Democratic voters.
Some organizations told The Post that the memo would stoke division between voting blocs and cause donors to withdraw money from critical efforts to register minority voters the party desperately needs.
Others said the party should focus on making sure already-registered Democrats show up to vote in November.
For his part, Mr. Biden says the polls are beginning to tilt in his favor as the two-man race comes into focus. He points to recent surveys that showed him leading Mr. Trump.
“The press — well, I like the press, but they don’t talk about it very much,” Mr. Biden said at a recent campaign stop in Texas. “Five national polls having us leading since my State of the Union address.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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