Massachusetts political parties stand by as their membership rolls evaporate

 

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Massachusetts political parties stand by as their membership rolls evaporate     September 13, 2026 By Steve Koczela

New party registration figures released by the secretary of state’s office once again show Massachusetts party membership withering. The newly released data show about 62,000 fewer party members compared to 2025 data, continuing the slide that began in 2020. At the same time, the number of unenrolled voters not affiliated with any party grew by over 220,000.

Contrary to what seems to be the gathering consensus, these trends do not reflect voters’ growing contempt for parties or distrust of institutions. Although party leaders and others regularly cite these factors as driving the decline in registration, there’s a much more prosaic explanation: What’s happening instead is new voters are being funneled into the “unenrolled” category due to the design of the state’s registration system.

In 2018, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a law automatically registering to vote any eligible resident who interacted with various state agencies. That includes anyone getting or renewing a driver’s license, applying for a state ID, applying for MassHealth benefits, or applying for health insurance through the state health connector. Crucially, these automatic voter registration systems do not collect party preference data at the time of registration, instead putting all new registrants in the unenrolled category. The system went into operation in 2020.

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The result has been a predictable flood of unenrolled voters while new party registrants have slowed to a trickle. This has been happening since 2020, and it continues today, even while many of these same voters hold strong party preferences and partisan views and would undoubtedly register with a party if presented with a clear opportunity.

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