Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses congressional and state elections. The 2021 off-year races were a curtain-raiser for the midterms -- and the stage was full of bad mojo for Democrats.
The latest entry into the debate comes from Forward Majority, a Democratic-aligned super PAC focused on winning the sorts of state legislative races that are increasingly central in American politics.
In a provocative new “Blueprint for Power,” the group calls for a “radical departure” from the Democratic Party’s existing strategy, which has left Republicans in command of key state legislatures across the country.
“We need to claw our way back to power to prevent election subversion,” Vicky Hausman, founder and co-chief executive of Forward Majority, said in an interview, expressing a common fear on the left that in 2024 Republicans will use those statehouse majorities to steal the next presidential election. Forward Majority has identified nearly 2 million unregistered voters it sees as likely Democratic, largely in suburban areas that the group says are critical to winning those legislatures back.
The new data comes as Republicans have begun to outpace Democrats in voter registration in major swing states, including Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Worse for Democrats, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the usual pathways that the party had used to bring in new voters: sign-ups at the Department of Motor Vehicles and face-to-face field work. And it comes as President Biden faces growing skepticism among African Americans over whether he has a formula to overcome voting restrictions pushed by G.O.P.-led state legislatures — the topic of a high-profile address that he plans to give on Tuesday in Atlanta.
An analysis by Catalist, a Democratic data firm, shows that in 2020, the Democrats’ traditional edge in voter registration shrank to nine percentage points in key states, down from a 19-percentage-point advantage over Republicans in 2009.
