The reverberations of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol – and the role then-President Donald Trump and his complicit allies in Congress played in it – are still moving through both the electorate and the country as a whole.
But less than a month removed from the riot, there’s a very troubling trend beginning to develop in states around the country: lots and lots of people are leaving the Republican Party.
Consider these numbers (as flagged by the invaluable and indefatigable Reid Wilson):
* More than 10,000 registered Republicans in Arizona left the party in January – almost five times the number of Democrats who left their side in that same time.
* In Utah, 7,600 Republicans have abandoned the party since January 6, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. By comparison, 830 left the Democratic Party.
* Almost 10,000 Pennsylvanians left the Republican Party in the first 25 days of January as compared with just over 3,200 Democrats, according to The Hill.
* In Colorado, more than 4,500 Republicans disaffiliated from the party between January 6 and the end of the month, 9NEWS reported.
* In the week after the January 6 riot, 2,300 Marylanders left the GOP, according to The Baltimore Sun.
Of course it’s worth noting that if people are going to change their party affiliations, they do tend do so shortly after the election. And that not every state requires voters to register by party, so we are looking at a necessarily limited sample. (Nineteen states have no party registration at all.) And that correlation ≠ causation.
Those caveats aside, it would be insanity for the Republican Party to ignore these registration warning signs.
The Point: The January riot has quite clearly tarnished the GOP brand in the eyes of at least a decent-sized chunk of those formerly aligned with the party. What remains to be seen is if this trend continues.