Republicans are gaining more new voters than Democrats in states Biden really needs to win

Joe Biden may be winning the polling battle, but President Trump is winning the voter registration war.

National and swing state polls continue to give the Democratic nominee a slight advantage in the 2020 race, with leads in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. But new voter registration in those states isn't looking so good for Biden, as more and more voters continue to register as Republicans than as Democrats, NBC News reports.

Trump won those four states in 2016, and they're also states where voters can register with a party, revealing how the parties are appealing to new voters. For example, while polls have pointed to Biden locking up Pennsylvania once again this year, and Democrats have overall registered more voters than Republicans in the state since 2016, recent registrations point the other direction. Pennsylvania gained 135,619 Republican voters between its June primary and the last week of September, while Democrats only gained 57,985.

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In North Carolina, a state that typically leans Republican but has narrowly polled for Biden this year, Republicans added 83,785 voters between their presidential primary and the end of September, while Democrats added 38,137. Republicans also registered 31,139 more voters in Arizona than Democrats, and more than 100,000 more in Florida.

In all of these states, though, tens of thousands of voters did register without choosing a party. Given that Florida went to Trump by just 112,911 votes in 2016, those voters could easily make all the difference.