An analysis claiming one million voters switched to the GOP last year was fatally flawed

The authors misused voter file data, conflating estimates of party ID with real changes in registration. The error was fixed by other analysts who find parity in party-switching since 2020

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that “More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year, according to voter registration data… A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans.”

The bombshell story was shared far and wide by election analysts, political reporters, and even some politicians. Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted them matter-of-factly to his followers; Florida Senator Rick Scott said the report was “another sign of the red wave coming this November as Democrats continue to go full force on their radical agenda.”

There’s just one huge problem: the reported shift is not actually real.

To understand why, we need to explain how this “voter registration data” works. Every state maintains a list of people who are registered to vote in its elections. These lists contain records of, a…