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LP National Membership Continues Fall

Revised LPUS membership counts, at end of month. Note in the past two months the drops of nearly 500 and nearly1000.

  • 2022-12 16,988
  • 2023-1 16,507
  • 2023-2 16,308
  • 2023-3 15,954
  • 2023-4 15,539
  • 2023-5 15,060
  • 2023-6 14,080

There had been a slow loss of sustaining members due to an unanticipated consequence of a software feature, these people still being sustaining members but not being counted as such.  That feature has now been fixed.  The new numbers are larger than the old numbers, but the fall continues unabated. Also, the prior software had a maximum of 300,000 entries.  The LNC had over a million, so 700,000 of the entries were purged.  These have now been recovered, with duplicates in the process of being purged.

9 Comments

  1. Stewart Flood Stewart Flood July 7, 2023

    One question that I remember asking when I was on the LNC, but that fell on pretty much and deaf ears, was what percentage of people who vote for Democrats, or Republicans are actual dues paying members of their respective parties. How do their numbers compare to the LP, Greens, etc?

    Of course, no one knows, because those parties do not publicly announce their membership.

    Not trying to defend or attack the LP by what I am saying, simply pointing out that if all the focus of the party is on dues paying members, and not on getting good candidates to run and get the public to vote for them, how can they ever succeed in doing anything other than covering payroll – which is really all that most staff care about.

    • George Phillies George Phillies Post author | July 8, 2023

      The Democrats and Republicans do not have, in most states, dues paying members in our sense.

  2. Jim Jim July 7, 2023

    LP voter registrations are falling, too. I checked the publicly available numbers last night and found:

    739,561 in late October up to general election day in November 2022
    732,856 as of last night, although 5 states haven’t been updated this year.

    Not a huge drop (0.9%, -6,705), but any drop is unusual. And it was fairly broad based. 16 states declined, 9 increased, 5 not updated.

    It isn’t a concern at this point in the cycle, just something to note.

    • George Phillies George Phillies Post author | July 8, 2023

      Good find, Jim.

    • Stewart Flood Stewart Flood July 9, 2023

      The LP brand is toxic right now. I have had conversations with a number of people that, while not being members of the party, did support them more often than not.

      So my guess is that people who were active in the party are starting to go to ground and “hide“ politically. And with activists and “old guard“ leadership being kicked out by the current [n*z*] style cult in charge, there is a lower influx of supporters at all levels.

      The number one fear I hear expressed is a return of a former president. Number two is the re-election of the current one, followed closely by if he is, the VP taking over.

      All scary thoughts in any order of concern. The lower registration would tend to agree with, but of course not prove my observations.

      The only thing that all the media seem to have right is that the country is highly polarized.

  3. ATBAFT ATBAFT July 5, 2023

    Dec 1988– dipped under 7,000. Two years later– over 10,000 and still trending upward. LNC and state parties cannot take their foot off the gas after prez elections. You have to re-sign all the new members and work the prez campaign’s contributor lists to get them to join.

  4. Stewart Flood Stewart Flood July 3, 2023

    This is a pretty serious bug. Duplicate memberships? So even after having adjusted the numbers up because of the bug, they are likely to drop some after de-duping.

    And are they just going to assume that everyone actually wanted them to treat the unchecked pledge box as if it were checked? If someone makes a donation and does not want to be a member, and does not check it, then they will be recording false information. Granted, that would not likely be a large number, but I’m sure it is greater than zero.

    I never did like that checkbox. Membership and non-member donations should have always been two different forms. The membership form should have a radio button for “I am a new member and I have signed the pledge” or “I am renewing my existing membership”.

    Hopefully they will get this sorted out without much more controversy.

  5. Root's Teeth Are Awesome Root's Teeth Are Awesome July 3, 2023

    These numbers aren’t very informative. Everyone knows that membership increases in a presidential election year, then drops.

    A more accurate assessment can be had by comparing presidential election years with each other; midterm election years with each other, etc.

    June 2023 numbers (the year before a presidential election) should be compared with June 2019, June 2015, June 2011, June 2007, etc. What would such a comparison reveal?

    • Jim Jim July 4, 2023

      The post-presidential year drop is over around the end of October of the year after the presidential election. They stay active for 12 months and the presidential year only donors stop at the beginning of November of the presidential year, so by the start of November the following year, they’re rolled off the member count.

      It then tends to be very stable for the next year and a half and then dips late in a pre-presidential year and/or early in a presidential year. I have speculated that the pre-presidential year / early presidential year dip is due to donors diverting limited resources to preferred candidates running in the major party primaries, but I don’t really know.

      Whatever is going on now has nothing to do with the post-presidential year slide or the pre-presidential year dip. There were only three month over month increases in donors since the end of 2020 through February this year, when I stopped writing things down because the Membership Report format now put out by the LNC is so screwed up.

      January 2021, +809, due to the Jan 6 insurrection

      October 2021, +505, … That would be shortly after the CAH suspension. Not sure if that’s related.

      June 2022, +661, due to the convention.

      Every single other month has been negative. That isn’t normal.

Comments are closed.