Voter registration down in Virginia this year compared to previous election years

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — The Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) is providing a snapshot of voter registration in Virginia ahead of November’s presidential election.

VPAP found that 188,000 Virginians have registered to vote so far in 2024, down considerably from previous presidential election years dating back to 2008.

“We are kind of maxing out on our new registrations, that we might have hit a ceiling in terms of kind of a new normal for voting participation,” Randolph-Macon Political Science Professor Rich Meagher told 8News.

Meagher says the decline might be because over six million Virginians are already registered to vote and because voter turnout is up compared to previous decades, meaning more people are already politically involved.

“Now, we are more like 60%, 70% turnout,” Meagher said. “That’s an improvement over past decades and it could be that’s just where we are going to be in the near future, so we might expect that new registrations would level off.”

As for whether the data will have any effect on the outcome in Virginia, Meagher says it’s unlikely, but that he believes it’s more likely to positively impact Vice President Kamala Harris than former President Donald Trump.

“Trump wants to upend the status quo in Virginia and if registrations are not suggesting a bunch of new voters or some sort of change to what the status quo is, I would say that’s worse news for the Trump campaign than the Harris campaign,” Meagher said.

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