The Democratic National Committee said it will spend millions of dollars to shift voter registration strategy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, starting with efforts in Arizona and Nevada.
The initiative, being announced Tuesday, will begin in Arizona and Nevada with at least $2 million for training organizers, according to the Associated Press. Party leaders said the plan is intended to help Democrats improve their performance in the fall contests by building and using more party-led registration capacity.
DNC Chair Ken Martin told the Associated Press that “It’s a crisis. And for our party to actually win elections, we have to actually create more Democrats,” adding “we need all hands on deck, not just the outside groups,” as the party seeks to win back control of Congress and break Republican unified control in Washington.
The AP report described the effort as a shift away from the way Democrats have historically leaned on nonprofit advocacy groups and individual campaigns for voter registration. Party leaders said that approach has generally been required by law to be nonpartisan, while they want a more explicitly partisan method similar to one they say Republicans have used by relying less on outside groups to register and mobilize voters.
The program’s initial phase will target young people, voters of color, and people without college educations, the AP said, describing those groups as having drifted away from Democrats in the last presidential race that returned Republican Donald Trump to the White House. Democrats also said the initiative will focus on recruiting organizers from a wide array of backgrounds, including gig economy workers and young parents, and that they expect organizers’ own perspectives to help the party connect with blue-collar Americans the party fears it has lost touch with in recent elections.
Santiago Mayer, founder of Voters for Tomorrow, which the AP said is collaborating with the DNC, said, “I think it’s incredible that Democrats are actually investing in reaching Democratic voters who have been left behind.” Mayer also said, “We got killed on persuasion in 2024, and I think this is a really important step, fixing it and ensuring that we do not have a repeat of that in 2026.”
The AP said the initiative will kick off with dozens of videos from lawmakers, activists and party leaders across the country. Democrats said they plan to boost enthusiasm through interstate party competitions throughout the year.
The White House dismissed the effort, with the AP reporting that a deputy White House chief of staff, James Blair, criticized the initiative on X as political messaging. Blair wrote, “This is fake. They are broke. In debt. Been losing voter registration in every state in the union since 2024. We call this ‘PR,’”
Martin said the investment is intended to create voter-registration infrastructure the party can rely on beyond the fall midterm elections. He told the Associated Press that “This is a critical piece of the infrastructure that we’re building to actually not only win the moment in ’26 but to win the future,” and added, “For us to put ourselves in a position to win in ’28 and ’30 and ’32, we actually have to keep doing this work and do it consistently.”