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The George Floyd Protests Were Crucial for Biden’s Win
It’s a protest rebound effect. The more people protest, the more people register.
Protests work, sometimes in unexpected ways. Targetsmart, a Democratic political data firm, drilled down into the voter registration data across the country and found that the coronavirus threat and shutdowns had led to a massive drop in voter registrations during the late winter and early spring months that are normally accompanied by a surge in registrations in sync with the presidential primaries. The March–April voter registration numbers for 2020 were down 32% from 2016, and the May number was down 54% from 2016.
But then the Black Lives Matter protests started. “That negative trend line changed dramatically in June,” the group recently reported in a study, attributing the change to the massive demonstrations of late May and early June. “Despite a full or partial lockdown in large swaths of the country for much of the month, voter registration began to rebound as people took to the streets to protest.”
That rebound was dramatic on the Democratic side of the aisle, including in at least one key swing state: More Democrats registered to vote in Michigan in June in 2020 than in 2016 — while Republican registration dropped 20% over the same period. Meanwhile, in…
