WASHINGTON – Recent spikes in voter registrations are shaking up the already contentious 2024 presidential race, with hundreds of thousands of new voters now signed up to cast ballots and help determine who resides in the White House for the next four years.
In the majority of the seven key battleground states where Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are particularly close in the polls, the current number of registered voters is up compared with the 2020 presidential contest that coincided with the COVID-19 global pandemic.
The surge in names that have been added to the voter rolls happens for a variety of reasons. For one, more than 8 million people across the U.S. are newly eligible to vote upon reaching their 18th birthday since the last mid-election cycle in 2022, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. On top of that, election experts told USA TODAY that several specific recent events – including Biden’s decision to stand down in place of Harris and a particular high-profile celebrity endorsement – could be motivating factors behind many of the new registrations.